* Research shows strong growth in Linux, Opteron and low-end servers
IDC and Gartner recently released data that shows strong growth in servers, Linux and AMD Opteron processors.
IDC estimates that factory revenue for servers grew 5.5% year over year to $11.5 billion in the third quarter of 2004. IDC says that is the sixth consecutive quarter of overall growth.
Intel and AMD servers grew the most, at 18.2% year over year. Mid-range enterprise servers declined 10.2% due to user migrations to volume Intel and AMD servers. The high-end enterprise server market, characterized by mainframe gear, grew by 1.9% year over year.
Gartner’s figures almost matched IDC’s. The Stamford, Conn., research firm estimated that server revenue reached $11.8 billion in the third quarter, a 6% increase year over year. They agreed that most of the growth was in the x86 segment of the market.
Of the major vendors, IBM led in server revenue with 32% of the market. HP had the second-highest revenue, with 27.8%. Dell followed in market share with 9.8%, and Sun brought up the tail end with 9.5% market share. Dell grew the fastest, with 17% growth.
Overall, 1.6 million servers shipped in the third quarter. HP shipped 28.5% of all servers, followed by Dell at 21.1% and IBM at 16.1%. Dell has the strongest growth rate in shipments – its shipments increased by 25% from the previous year.
Among operating systems, Linux grew in revenue by 55.7% over last year. Windows accounted for 36.5% of all operating system revenue. Other operating systems showed a slow decline. Unix lost 3.6% market share.
Both Gartner and IDC also say that the x86 market is shifting from 32-bit to 64-bit systems. The 64-bit market grew 14% in terms of revenue and 18% in terms of shipments. RISC-based systems showed a decline of 10% in revenue.
AMD’s 32/64-bit Opteron had the sharpest increase – its revenue grew 400% year over year. IDC estimates that more than 60% of the Opteron-based servers shipping are being used in high-performance computing environments and are running Linux. Intel’s EM64T technology is being deployed with Windows in 32-bit environments.
Blade servers also fared well, with their shipments increasing 44% year over year. Approximately 75,000 blade servers shipped in the third quarter. IDC estimates that blade server revenues will surpass a billion dollars this year. IBM has taken the lead in blade servers this year with 44.2% of the market.
