- 4chan hell raisers finding fame brings heat?
- The 10 dumbest mistakes network managers make
- NetApp quits bidding war in face of EMC opposition
- CompuServe closes after 30 years
- Google to launch open-source Chrome OS this year
Worldwide server revenue rose in 2005 driven largely by increased sales of x86-based servers, according to figures released by market research firms Gartner and IDC Research this week.
Worldwide server revenue in 2005 grew 4.5% to $51.7 billion, while server shipments grew 12.7% to 7.6 million units from the previous year, according to Gartner. IDC estimates revenue grew 4.4% to $51.3 billion, while shipments grew 11.6% to 7 million servers.
Although the two research firms' numbers vary, the overall message was the same: lower-end servers based on x86 microprocessors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices continue to outpace sales of midrange and higher-end enterprise servers.
Revenue for the x86 server market grew 11% year-over-year to $25.7 billion, while shipments were up 14.3% to 7 million units, according to Gartner. Revenue for RISC-Itanium Unix servers remained about flat year-over-year, increasing 0.5% to $15.4 billion, while shipments were down 5.3% to 460,000 units, said Gartner.
"These are trends we see continue in the market with the shift to lower-priced machines; the higher-priced machines just aren't selling as well," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research director for Gartner's enterprise systems group, in Stamford, Conn.
"Systems priced above $25,000 are slowing down pretty dramatically, as customers are moving dollars over to x86-based volume systems," said John Humphreys, program manager for enterprise servers with IDC, in Framingham, Mass.
The usage of x86 systems in high-performance computing, cluster implementations, virtualization and Web serving are among factors driving the increased sales, said researchers.
IBM continued to lead the server market with 32.1% revenue share followed by HP, at 28.2%, Dell, with 10.5% and Sun with 9.6% share, according to Gartner. IDC reported similar figures, with IBM accounting for 32.9% of the market, HP with 27.7%, Dell with 10.3% and Sun with 9.5%.
For the fourth quarter of 2005, Gartner reported that worldwide server revenue rose 3.5% from the same year-ago quarter to $14.7 billion, while IDC's figures placed revenue relatively flat from the same year-ago quarter, down 0.2% to $14.5 billion.
The Leader in Network Knowledge
Partner Content
Explore the Ultrium Edge
The powerful tape technology can address data security with tape encryption as well as long term data protection.
Find Out More
Disk and Tape Square Off
Discover what disk and tape really cost and which solution provides lower total cost of ownership and optimizes energy use for your organization
Download this White Paper
Don't Fall for the Myths
The Clipper Group explores the truth behind the myths of tape, digging into the misconceptions in the disk vs. tape debate.
Review this information
information examination
An examination of information security issues, methods and securing data with LTO-4 tape drive encryption
Read this analysis
Comment