HPE said the hyper-converged market was estimated to be approximately $2.4 billion in 2016 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 25 percent, to nearly $6 billion, by 2020.

"This (acqusition) will apply pressure to Cisco to step up its game in the hyper-converged space," said Matt Duncan, director of GDT Labs at General Datatech, an HPE and SimpliVity partner ranked No. 45 on the 2016 CRN Solution Provider 500. "If you look at the marketplace around hyper-converged, it started out as these separate players -- SimpliVity, Nutanix, Cisco partnered with SimpliVity -- and now Cisco is producing its own and so it's only natural for HPE to respond. It's a fantastic purchase for HPE."

Versatile Communications's Barker said the hyperconverged landscape is shifting to the larger market players like Cisco and HPE.

He expects SimpliVity's market expertise and history will boost HPE's channel sales around hyper-convergence. "SimpliVity has got street cred and it's going to help and probably put pressure on Cisco as a result," said Barker.

General Datatech's Duncan said SimpliVity needed to find a hardware home for its hyper-converged software.

"SimpliVity had to find a home because they didn't produce the hardware that went around their solutions. Sometimes it made it difficult to figure out how to sell, how to deliver and how to bring to market from different places," said Duncan. "This helps bring these solutions to market a lot faster to customers."

HPE said the combined portfolio will offer a rich set of enterprise data services across hyper-converged, 3Par storage, composable infrastructure and multi-cloud offerings.

Cisco took the wraps off its hyper-convergence play, Hyperflex Systems, at Cisco Partner Summit in March in front of thousands of partners. Hyperflex consists of Cisco UCS servers and software-defined storage technology developed through a strategic partnership with Springpath. By August, Cisco reported there was approximately 500 customers using HyperFlex.

"The market is going to have to start outputting feature functionally at the same rate as their competitors in that space," said Duncan. "It's a great thing for our customers and us as partners."