The worldwide server market grew at 7.3pc year over year to US$11.3bn in the first quarter of this year, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of positive growth, according to IDC. Linux-based servers marked the biggest growth with revenues up 56.9pc and unit shipments up 46.4pc.
According to IDC’s Worldwide Server Tracker, which focuses on factory revenue, demand for server systems is on the rise, and this quarter marked the second consecutive quarter in which all major categories of the worldwide server market grew year on year.
According to IDC, the worldwide server market continues to show signs of a strong recovery. It claims that the business climate has changed dramatically since the economic downturn – when vendors pushed technology – to an economic recovery where customer demand is surging.
IDC warns that the server market landscape is undergoing major change as the influence of new technologies, including Linux, clustering and server blades are forging new deployments of IT infrastructure.
Linux server sales grew revenues at 56.9pc and unit shipments at 46.4pc, the seventh consecutive quarter of double-growth revenue growth.
Windows servers posted double-digit growth as revenues grew 16.4pc and unit shipments grew 26.5pc on the year.
Unix server revenue declined slightly, dipping 3pc worldwide on the year. However, revenue showed growth in Asia-Pacific countries where Unix-based IT infrastructure and telecoms are expanding.
IBM held onto its number one spot in the worldwide server systems market with 29.7pc market share whilst growing revenues by 20.5pc.
HP took the number two spot revenue wise (but was number one in terms of unit shipments) with 26.9pc share, growing revenue 3.8pc on the year.
Dell and Sun Microsystems were in a statistical tie for the number three spot in the rankings of server vendors, based on worldwide factory revenue results that differed by less than 1pc.
“IT spending is clearly trending upward and IT organisations are beginning to rebuild their computing infrastructure,” said Vernon Turner, group vice president of Global Enterprise Server Solutions at IDC. “Following nearly three years of slowed spending during the economic downturn, we see that server systems are a priority in these rebuilding efforts.”
By John Kennedy
