IDC released the latest “IDC China HCI Market Overview, 2025 Q3”. In the HCI software rankings for the first three quarters of 2025, SmartX ranked first with a 33.1% market share. This marks the 11th consecutive quarter that SmartX has led the Chinese HCI software market (from Q1 2023 to Q3 2025).
In 2025, SmartX solidified its leadership in the HKMO market, dominating IDC and Gartner rankings for HCI and virtualization. By launching ECP 6.2 and SKS 1.5, SmartX accelerated the global “VMware exit” movement, delivering mission-critical reliability to finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. From robust IT modernization to cutting-edge AI infrastructure, SmartX is no longer just an alternative—it is the new standard for the AI era.
Conventional upgrades are resource-intensive and error-prone due to complex manual steps. SmartX addresses this by integrating the Upgrade Center into its CloudTower management platform, which uses advanced visualization, automation, and fine-grained control to fundamentally simplify the procedure and guarantee platform stability.
Amid rapid growth in NEV and rail transit sectors, manufacturers demand modernized IT infrastructure. SmartX Enterprise Cloud Platform (ECP) replaces VMware virtualization/vSAN, delivering high-performance, reliable, and manageable solutions for core systems (MES, PLM) and cutting-edge applications (IoV, Big Data Platform), addressing rising licensing costs and performance bottlenecks.
SmartX has empowered numerous new energy enterprises to replace VMware virtualization and vSAN with SmartX ECP, providing high-performance, highly reliable, and easy-to-manage IT infrastructure support for mission-critical application systems (such as MES, PLM, ERP, and SCADA), and more scenarios.
IT operations teams often face inefficiencies and a high risk of configuration errors when managing large numbers of virtual machines (VMs) on virtualization platforms like VMware. SMTX VMTools addresses these challenges by enhancing visibility, control, and efficiency in VM management.
SKS 1.5 introduces cross-site active-active deployment, multi-tenancy, and enhanced observability, ensuring enterprise-grade reliability for critical container workloads.
SMTX Backup & Disaster Recovery not only provides core functionalities on par with VMware in virtual machine (VM) replication and fault recovery orchestration, but also integrates advanced features like native backups, seamless cross-site network failover, and sandbox testing. These features enable users to build a comprehensive and unified disaster recovery system.
SmartX has been recognized for the third consecutive year as a Representative Vendor in Gartner’s Market Guide for Server Virtualization Platforms, highlighting its production-grade virtualization platform and large-scale enterprise deployments that empower users to accelerate VMware replacement with proven stability and cost efficiency.
15 hospitals are replacing VMware virtualization with SmartX ECP to enhance stability, security, and efficiency. Key applications such as HIS, EMR, and PACS are now supported on SmartX’s high-performance platform, driving significant cost savings and IT modernization in the healthcare sector.
Three leading airline and railway groups have successfully replaced VMware virtualization and vSAN with SmartX Enterprise Cloud Platform (ECP), advancing IT Application Innovation (ITAI) while achieving higher stability, flexibility, and cost efficiency across critical systems.
SmartX ranks No.1 in China’s HCI software market for the 10th consecutive quarter, strengthening its leadership in full-stack enterprise cloud and VMware alternatives.
In Q3 2025, we provided an in-depth analysis of SmartX ECP as an enterprise IT infrastructure solution and VMware alternative through two blog series – Busting the Myths and SmartX vs. VMware. We continued to work closely with enterprises, especially large manufacturers, to modernize IT infrastructure and connect with our partners through various events.
5 enterprise stories in leveraging SmartX ECP to support ROBO, VMware/Nutanix replacement, and Dev/Test with VDI.
Six manufacturers leverage SmartX ECP to build the full-stack enterprise cloud and provide core applications with high-performance and stable support.
As a robust alternative to VMware Tanzu, SKS offers comparable container management with simpler, unified management for hybrid environments and enhanced domestic ecosystem compatibility.
Moving on from VMware? SmartX Everoute is a great alternative to NSX. It provides all the key features—like distributed firewall and traffic visualization—but with simpler, unified management. This makes network security easier to handle and more affordable.
As the virtualization module of SmartX Enterprise Cloud Platform (ECP), SmartX native hypervisor – ELF provides robust enterprise-grade virtualization capabilities with high availability and optimized performance, enabling IT teams to manage and operate virtual machines (VMs) with greater efficiency and confidence.
As a competitive full-stack alternative to VMware, SmartX Enterprise Cloud Platform (ECP) offers four solutions that allow enterprises to replace VMware vSphere, vSAN, Tanzu, NSX, and other components at their own pace, achieving cost reduction and efficiency gains.
This article busts the myth that HCI platforms like SmartX ECP fall short for containerized workloads—highlighting how its built-in SKS delivers near-bare-metal performance, consistent multi-layer scheduling, unified networking, and streamlined management to support Kubernetes at scale with confidence.
In this article, we’ll address several misconceptions around SmartX ECP O&M and explain how we empower IT teams to master O&M with ease.
In this article, we’ll address three of the most common misconceptions about SmartX ECP when it comes to ensuring stability and system control.
In this article, we’ll address three of the most prevalent misconceptions about SmartX ECP in supporting mission-critical applications and databases.
Many see hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) as limited, questioning its ability to deliver a comprehensive cloud. Gartner-listed SmartX Enterprise Cloud Platform (SmartX ECP) is a full-stack enterprise cloud solution. It proves HCI can reduce complexity and costs while providing high performance, robust security, and seamless integration for all your cloud needs.
Xinyi Glass replaced VMware with SmartX ECP, building active-active data center clusters. This achieved 18% performance gains and 30% cost reduction for core databases, while enhancing security. The move significantly boosted IT availability and efficiency, marking a successful digital transformation.
In Q2 2025, IDC recognized SmartX for topping China’s HCI software market for the second consecutive year. We continued to innovate our products and solutions, with the release of SKS 1.4 and significant upgrades of the VCCI solution in security management. We also shared compelling customer stories across the financial services and healthcare sectors, showcasing how SmartX ECP enables core system operations, serves as a VMware alternative, and facilitates IT modernization.
This blog will continue to focus on SmartX ECP’s use cases in achieving disaster recovery (DR) across multiple campuses, supporting hospital-specific applications such as integration platforms and PACS, advancing cloud-native transformation and migrating from public cloud to on-premises platforms.
This blog will focus on SmartX ECP’s use cases in building enterprise cloud platforms capable of running core clinical systems and databases and replacing VMware and Nutanix in healthcare institutions.
This blog focuses on SmartX ECP’s use cases in the funds and trusts industries, sharing customer stories and more insights into FSI digital transformation.
This blog will focus on SmartX ECP’s use cases in the securities and futures industries, sharing customer stories and more insights into FSI digital transformation.
SmartX has helped over 400 FSI enterprises modernize their IT infrastructure using our Enterprise Cloud Platform (ECP). This blog focuses on SmartX ECP’s use cases in the banking and insurance industries, sharing customer stories and more insights into FSI digital transformation.
SmartX VM-Container Converged Infrastructure (VCCI) solution now supports the unified network security policy management of both VMs and containers. This enhanced feature ensures the efficient interoperability between virtualized and containerized applications while boosting the data security, visualization, and O&M simplicity of the entire SmartX Enterprise Cloud Platform (ECP).
According to IDC report “China Software-defined Storage and Hyperconverged System Market Overview 2024 Q4”, SmartX ranked No. 1 in China’s hyper-converged software market in 2024 full year with a 28.4% share, maintaining its leading position for the second consecutive year (2023–2024).
In Q1 2025, SmartX continued to be recognized by IDC and Gartner as the leader in China’s HCI Software Market. We released SmartX ECP v6.2 and enhanced various features in security, performance, availability, and O&M support. Facing enterprise demands regarding DeepSeek, we introduced a private deployment solution based on SmartX ECP to accelerate enterprises’ DeepSeek deployment and validation process.
With SmartX ECP, enterprises can deploy DeepSeek (with various parameters) on virtual machines (VMs) or on the bare-metal Kubernetes. By simply scaling ECP clusters with GPU-deployed nodes, enterprises can build flexible and high-performance DeepSeek infrastructure and accelerate the business validation process.
SmartX is thrilled to introduce Enterprise Cloud Platform v6.2, delivering enhanced security, compliance, performance, and availability for enterprise users.
With the release of SMTX OS 6.1, SmartX ECP improves its capabilities in handling hard disk failures by adding new features to identify I/O blocking and software RAID failures, further ensuring continuity and stability for critical businesses.
Visit us at Booth A13 to delve deeper into our AI infrastructure solution and discover how SmartX ECP can benefit insurance companies!
In this blog, we will dive deep into the configuration strategies for using EC, and provide the best practices for using data replication and EC in SmartX ECP through comparisons and real cases.
According to the recent IDC report, SmartX leads the China HCI software market with a share of 30.5% in 2024 Q1-Q3, which also marks the 7th consecutive quarter that SmartX has taken the lead (2023 Q1 – 2024 Q3).
As SmartX keeps innovating IT infrastructure solutions and offers SmartX Enterprise Cloud Platform (ECP), this article will provide updated information on what makes SmartX ECP a competitive alternative for Nutanix solutions, including product and performance comparisons, four migration approaches, and four customer use cases.
Join us for an exclusive webinar where we explore the latest trends in digital workspaces, identify common VDI user experience challenges, and show you how SmartX VDI Solution can transform your VDI environment by improving performance, reducing costs, and simplifying management.
In Q4 2024, SmartX continued to be recognized by IDC as the leader in China’s HCI Software Market for the first half of 2024. We further expanded the HK & MO markets and have acquired several enterprise-grade use cases with the help of our partners including Homison Solutions and Zens.
With the release of SMTX OS 6.1, ZBS (distributed block storage component of SMTX OS and SmartX ECP) has enhanced its storage tiering model by segmenting the cache layer into a cluster-level write cache pool and a node-level read cache pool, allowing users to leverage Erasure Coding (EC) for data redundancy protection under extensive data storage scenarios while improving space utilization.
With SmartX ECP, the hospital has fulfilled the goals of IT infrastructure modernization and achieved integrated management of virtualized and containerized environments.
According to “IDC China Software-defined Storage and Hyperconverged System Market Overview, 2024 Q2” report, SmartX continues to lead the China HCI software market with a share of 25.5% in 2024H1.
In Q3 2024, SmartX continued receiving recognition from IDC and Gartner for our HCI-powered Enterprise Cloud Platform (ECP) and native hypervisor ELF. We also hosted the HK Grand Opening Event and VMware HCI Alternative Webinar to strengthen our collaboration with HK & MO partners and cus…
SKS 1.3 greatly improves the user experience of container management on SmartX Enterprise Cloud Platform (SmartX ECP).
On September 13, 2024, SmartX successfully hosted the HK Grand Opening and Channel Kick-off Event, bringing together partners from Hong Kong and Macao. The event aimed to empower our partners to help more HK and MO enterprise customers modernize their IT infrastructures with restricted budgets but increased efficiency using SmartX Enterprise Cloud Platform (ECP).
As the software-defined network and security component of SmartX Enterprise Cloud Platform (ECP), Everoute 3.0 introduces Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networking, which provides secure and isolated network space for virtual machines (VMs) in SmartX enterprise cloud environments.
In the recently released “Market Guide for Server Virtualization” by Gartner, SmartX was again recognized as a representative vendor due to the rich enterprise features of its native hypervisor ELF, its capabilities of VMware replacement and migration, as well as its various customer cases in production environments.
In our recent HK & MO webinar, VMware HCI Alternative – More Than Replacement, SmartX experts shared their insights on Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, and introduced how to achieve a full-stack VMware replacement and IT infrastructure modernization through our new solution – SmartX Enterprise Cloud Platform (SECP).
To better support mixed workloads of VM and container, SmartX introduces the VM-Container Converged Infrastructure (VCCI), leveraging its full-stack hyperconvergence capabilities. It enables users to centrally manage foundational resources, enhancing interconnectivity between virtualized and containerized applications and resource utilization.
Recently, SmartX officially launched HCI 6.0, enhancing our Enterprise Cloud Platform (ECP). One of the standout features is the introduction of SMTX File Storage (SFS), which enables SmartX ECP to offer enterprise customers stable, high-performance, and scalable distributed file storage services. With SFS, enterprises can meet diverse data storage needs using a single platform, reducing the costs associated with legacy NAS procurement while boosting storage reliability and performance.
Join our online webinar on August 8th to discover why you should transition from VMware to SmartX ECP!
IDC has published “IDC China Software-defined Storage and Hyperconverged System Market Overview, 2024 Q1”, analyzing the China HCI market and the China HCI SW+Certified Server System market for the first quarter of 2024.
In Q2 2024, SmartX was recognized by IDC as the leader in China's HCI software market for the full year of 2023. We have upgraded our hyperconverged software HCI 6.0 with five added features and four new scenarios to meet the emerging demands in the AI and container era. Additionally, we have provided our customers with valuable guides on VMware replacement and VM migration.
In the AI and container era, SmartX announces hyperconverged software HCI 6.0 with key upgrades, including 5 added features and 4 new scenarios, to help our customers address challenges in supporting different architecture and various new applications, managing and maintaining IT infrastructure, and replacing VMware products.
Featuring the converged deployment of compute and storage, SMTX OS (SmartX hyperconvergence infrastructure software) enhances the effectiveness of VM HA through storage features such as multi-replica strategy and rack awareness (topology-aware data allocation). Additionally, it offers rich VM rebuilding services that enable IT engineers to address various server and VM failure scenarios through an optimized VM HA function.
Many users are concerned about VM migration when planning to replace VMware. In this blog, we will dive into the entire process of migrating VMs from VMware to an alternative hypervisor, using SMTX Migration Tool as an example. Finally, we will share two case studies that have achieved large-scale VM migration from VMware to SmartX ELF virtualization using SMTX Migration Tool.
Leveraging SmartX’s native hypervisor – ELF, and user-friendly migration tool – SMTX Migration Tool, enterprise users can flexibly achieve production-grade VMware virtualization replacement and IT infrastructure upgrades.
In this blog, we will share four case studies of FSI, healthcare, and manufacturing enterprises that successfully replaced vSAN and VMware HCI with SmartX HCI solutions.
SmartX has introduced an HCI solution for AI applications. Featuring the convergence of compute resources (CPU and GPU), convergence of workloads, and convergence of storage resources, SmartX HCI provides enterprise-grade AI applications with high-performance, low-latency computing and storage that enables flexible allocation of resources.
SmartX takes nearly a quarter of the market, with a share of 23.5%.
This is the second year that SmartX is included in the report.
In Q1 2024, SmartX continued to receive recognition from IDC for our leading market share in China’s HCI Software market. Dedicated to IT infrastructure innovation, we released SKS 1.2 with outstanding performance and enhanced Kubernetes support for AI applications. We’ve also provided professional solutions targeting customers’ needs for ransomware protection and VMware replacement.
This article will comprehensively analyze different coping strategies for users of different VMware solutions, and provide specific suggestions for strategy implementation.
With these updates, SKS 1.2 helps users apply AI scenarios in containers based on easily created Kubernetes clusters.
This article presents empirical performance data of Kubernetes running stateful and stateless applications on VMs (SMTX Kubernetes Services, referred to as SKS) and bare-metal servers. Overall, the results demonstrate that SKS shows performance ranging from 82% to 96% of bare-metal-based Kubernetes, indicating that VM-based Kubernetes can effectively meet the requirements of the majority of containerized applications in production environments.
To help customers defend against ransomware attacks, SmartX has introduced HCI 5.1 portfolio with upgraded anti-ransomware capabilities. Leveraging SmartX observability platform (based on CloudTower), software-defined network and security product – Everoute, and SMTX Backup & DR, organizations can protect their systems from ransomware through a three-stage strategy: actively detect ransomware attacks, isolate infected VMs, and recover data in a secure environment.
With the introduction of SmartX HCI 5.1, our HCI portfolio has evolved into a full-stack solution that provides unified computing, storage, network, management, network & security support for virtualized and containerized applications in production environments. In this article, we will delve into key feature upgrades and new components of SmartX HCI 5.1, unveiling their potential to drive business value.
The recently published “IDC China Software-defined Storage and Hyperconverged System Market Overview, 2023 Q3” report analyzes the market share of HCI appliances and independently-sold HCI software (HCI Software Integrated System. In HCI software market share, SmartX continues to lead with 19.4% market share in 2023 Q3, following the dominance from previous two quarters (2023 Q2 and Q1).
To address the dynamic nature of data traffic in virtualization, SmartX introduces Everoute 2.0, a network and security product with an upgraded software-defined network load balancing feature. This feature enhances application performance and availability, offering unified support for both virtual machines (VMs) and containers running on SmartX HCI (ELF) clusters.
2023 marks a new milestone for SmartX, as we have helped over 1,000 enterprise customers deploy over 20,000 HCI nodes worldwide. We continued to upgrade our products and solutions, with our HCI portfolio evolving into a full-stack IT infra solution with enhanced capabilities in virtualization, storage, network and security, O&M, DR, migration, and container management. Our products have been widely recognized by research institutions, including Gartner, IDC, Forrester, and GigaOm, and customers from various industries, including financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing.
Hyperconvergence software (HCI) usually leverages multiple replicas to provide redundant protection for storage data. However, the mainstream multi-replica strategy still cannot avoid the risk of data loss during the replica recovery process. To address this challenge, SmartX HCI 5.1 introduces the innovative “temporary replica” strategy. This strategy prevents the degradation of replica numbers during the replica restoration process, enhances the security of storage data, and strengthens the stability of core business services.
To facilitate users in leveraging network virtualization, SmartX has introduced PCI NIC pass-through capability in SMTX OS 5.1. This feature, combined with the existing SR-IOV pass-through and virtual NIC capabilities supported in previous versions, enables SMTX OS 5.1 to comprehensively support ELF (SmartX native hypervisor) users in harnessing the benefits of network I/O virtualization. Users can select the most suitable options based on their requirements for network performance, network isolation, and cost efficiency in various use cases, including futures trading, HPC, and more.
Gartner released Navigate Cloud Computing and Data Center Infrastructure Markets, evaluating cloud computing and data center technology routes that enable on-premises and hybrid deployments.
SmartX’s container management and service product - SMTX Kubernetes Service (SKS), has received certification from the Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).
As a leading HCI solution provider, SmartX has also introduced the DRS feature in the latest HCI software version SMTX OS 5.1. Unlike VMware 6.x and other mainstream virtualization platforms, SMTX OS enhances DRS implementation with an innovative scoring system, which can fully adapt to the containerized environment, improving resource utilization and O&M efficiency.
With limited O&M staff, ConnectWave, a leading E-commerce enterprise in Korea, found it difficult to efficiently manage their legacy IT infrastructure. With SmartX HCI, ConnectWave not only successfully integrates IT infrastructure management but also simplifies O&M with a reduction of existing racks by more than 50%.
SmartX HCI, the full-stack HCI for both virtualized and containerized applications in production, announced earlier its new version 5.1. If you’re interested in the new features and demos, don’t miss out on our online webinar next week!
SmartX today announced that it has been named a contender in The Forrester Wave™: Hyperconverged Infrastructure, Q4 2023, published by Forrester Research, Inc. The report identified the most significant 11 providers and evaluated them against 36 criteria. This is SmartX’s debut in the Forrester HCI wave since the report’s last update in Q3 2020.
IDC recently published “China Software-defined Storage and Hyperconverged System Market Overview, 2023 Q2”. SmartX continues to rank No. 1 in the HCI SW Certified System market segment with a market share of 18.1%.
In Q3 2023, SmartX achieved a significant milestone by introducing our upgraded HCI portfolio, SmartX HCI 5.1. We have also received recognition from Gartner and IDC for our Chinese HCI SW Certified System market share and APAC customers’ choices. Moreover, we are actively collaborating with customers in various industries, including Finance, Healthcare, and Manufacturing, to explore HCI scenarios and cater to their specific needs.
To maximize GPU utilization, many enterprises choose to virtualize GPUs or use them in virtualization (including HCI). But how can we fully leverage GPU’s capabilities on virtualized IT infrastructure? And how can we provide stable, high-performance storage as well as compute resources for various GPU applications with an integrated IT infrastructure? To help users address these challenges, SmartX has introduced GPU passthrough and vGPU features in the upgraded HCI software SMTX OS 5.1.
SmartX was named an Asia/Pacific Customer’s Choice in the recently released “Voice of the Customer for Full-Stack Hyperconverged Infrastructure Software” by Gartner. This marks the third consecutive year of SmartX being named an APAC Customers’ Choice for HCI software.
One of the key challenges in replacing server hardware is ensuring the stability of mission-critical services during the hardware replacement. With SmartX HCI, O&M staff can achieve seamless replacement of HCI servers through two solutions: rebuilding the cluster on a new server, and rollingly replacing servers in the same cluster.
Today SmartX announces its ungraded hyper-converged infrastructure portfolio, SmartX HCI 5.1, which can provide unified computing, storage, network, and management support for virtualized and containerized applications in production environments.
As cloud computing has advanced, technologies like network virtualization have made it easier for administrators to centrally manage networks. However, this has also led to increased complexity in network traffic within the cloud. Traditional methods and tools for diagnosing data traffic face challenges when it comes to visualizing and analyzing "east-west traffic" on virtual networks. This creates network blind spots and further complicates issue locating.
In this article, we will delve into this issue by comparing the operation of Kubernetes on virtual machines (VMs) and bare-metal servers. This will include an examination of IT architecture, as well as a comparison of Kubernetes capabilities on both platforms, covering aspects such as performance, availability, agility, security, cost, and more.
Recently, SmartX and Alauda, one of the leading cloud-native platform providers, jointly launched a cloud-native solution with full-stack HCI and container platform. Combining SmartX’s HCI and Kubernetes services with the Alauda Container Platform (ACP), this joint solution provides customers with one-stop services for enterprise cloud, accelerating the cloud-native transformation of enterprise IT infrastructure.
Hyperconvergence (HCI) has gained increasing recognition among customers due to its software-defined architecture and integrated deployment. As a result, HCI’s application scenarios have gradually expanded to encompass most production services. However, questions remain as to whether HCI is capable of supporting mission-critical applications such as databases. To address this issue, in this article, we will discuss how SmartX HCI optimizes Oracle data warehouse batch processing performance with compelling test results.
IDC recently published “China Software-defined Storage and Hyperconverged System Market Overview, 2023 Q1.” In contrast to its previous reports, this research additionally explores the HCI SW Certified System market segment, focusing on the “HCI SW + Certified Server” ship model. In this market segment, SmartX ranked 1st with 21.9% market share in 2023Q1.
In Q2 2023, SmartX’s HCI product and native hypervisor ELF have been included in multiple reports from Forrester, IDC and Gartner. On the other hand, our new product, SKS 1.0, can help I&O teams easily deploy and manage production-ready Kubernetes clusters. Our professionality in products and services has also received recognition from customers in finance, healthcare, and manufacturing.
One of the most prevalent problems encountered in storage systems is disk failure. Since all hard drives are consumable and subject to wear and tear, continuous usage can lead to a decline in disk performance. Hence, it is crucial to carry out frequent inspections and prevent disks from failing.
Gartner has recently released its “Market Guide for Server Virtualization”, highlighting the new trends in the server virtualization market. SmartX was recognized as a representative vendor due to its SMTX OS, with capabilities including enterprise features of Native Hypervisor ELF, converged deployment in both VMs and containers, support of various virtualization platforms, and end-to-end optimization in the virtualization layer.
SmartX today releases SKS 1.0, to help I&O teams easily deploy and manage production-ready Kubernetes clusters. This new product preloads commonly-used Kubernetes addons and integrates industry-leading SmartX hyper-converged product components (including virtualization, distributed storage, networking and security, etc.), to build a complete enterprise cloud infrastructure that can support both virtualized and containerized applications.
When businesses upgrade their IT infrastructure to hyperconvergence (HCI), they often hope to cut costs and improve resource utilization by repurposing existing hardware devices like servers. However, this can be challenging in practice as the selected HCI product may not be compatible with the existing hardware or may only be available in a packaged hardware form. Another challenge is managing both legacy and new hardware devices in a unified manner.
The recent IDC Perspective report, “Hyperconverged Infrastructure Use Will Continue to Grow in Edge Environments”, has highlighted the growing use of HCI at edge sites. SmartX is featured in the report as an HCI vendor offering multiple deployment options.