17 Jul 2019

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., July 17, 2019 – A recent International Data Corporation (IDC) survey of IT and business personnel responsible for technology purchases found that improved security, enhanced operational efficiency, and reduction of management costs were the top drivers for the adoption of container infrastructure software products in their production environments.

Launched at the end of 2018, IDC's Enterprise Infrastructure Market Pulse report series provides insights into near-term enterprise IT infrastructure spending sentiments as well as end user adoption of new technologies and infrastructure delivery models that shape the future of the compute and storage industries. These insights are gathered from worldwide quarterly surveys of 1,000 IT and business users with knowledge and/or responsibilities for IT infrastructure purchases.

The Vendor View analysis of the survey results focuses on the sentiments of technology buyers regarding different suppliers, as well as priorities for short-term investments into compute and storage infrastructure. The Market View analyzes end users' adoption plans for particular emerging technologies or IT delivery models and their impact on IT infrastructure decisions. In 2019, the topics to be analyzed in the Market View include private/hybrid cloud (1Q19 survey), containers (2Q19 survey), AI and accelerated computing (3Q19 survey), and flash technologies (4Q19 survey).

"IDC's Enterprise Infrastructure Market Pulse generates regular insight into enterprise spending sentiments with different IT infrastructure suppliers, as well as priorities for short-term compute, storage and hyperconverged infrastructure investments," said Stephen Belanger, senior research analyst, Infrastructure System, Platforms, and Technologies Group at IDC. "These demand-side insights complement IDC's research on compute and enterprise storage markets delivering the essential 'story behind the numbers’ and providing early signs of any changes in the market."

Containers is a fast-growing technology influencing the way enterprise applications are deployed. Although it's a relatively new area of the IT market, it has already gained traction within the end user and vendor communities. In addition to the three factors driving container adoption, the Enterprise Infrastructure Market Pulse 2Q19 survey, completed in April 2019, revealed the following:

• On the project side, Big Data/machine learning (ML)/artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives were a top driver for end user interest to container technologies.
• Dell Technologies/Dell EMC, Cisco, HPE, and NetApp were named by respondents as the top strategic suppliers of IT infrastructure (server and/or storage) for key initiatives, including artificial intelligence (AI), digital transformation, and modernization of server and storage infrastructures.

"Adoption of containers technology is growing and growing fast, which should come as no surprise given the benefits associated with container use," said Natalya Yezhkova, research vice president, Infrastructure Systems, Platforms, and Technologies at IDC. "At the same time, end users pointed out a number of challenges related to container use. While these issues will need to be addressed, it seems clear that containers will be used in more and more initiatives by organizations of all sizes."

About the Enterprise Infrastructure Market Pulse

IDC's Enterprise Infrastructure Market Pulse provides detailed quarterly insights into spending sentiments regarding the purchase of IT infrastructure products (server, storage, and hyperconverged) and end-user priorities for short-term investments into IT infrastructure. The insights are gathered from a worldwide survey of 1,000 end users spread across various vertical industries and company sizes. Each quarterly survey also asks end users to provide insights into their adoption plans for emerging technologies or IT delivery models. The survey themes change every quarter and look at longer-term trends that have significant impact on the IT infrastructure markets. In 2Q19, the survey theme was containers.

Complete analysis of the Enterprise Infrastructure Market Pulse Survey, 2Q19, can be found in two special reports: IDC's Enterprise Infrastructure Market Pulse, Market View, 2Q19: Insights into Deployments of Containers (IDC #US45326519) and IDC's Enterprise Infrastructure Market Pulse: 2Q19 Vendor View (IDC #US45305219).