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1Rack Architecture, x86 Systems Helped Drive Q3 Server Growth
2HPE, Dell Still the Top 2 Vendors
3Lenovo Big Gainer, IBM Big Loser
4It Wasn’t All Bad for IBM
The impact of the Lenovo deal on the numbers for Big Blue skewed IBM’s performance to a degree. According to Gartner, beyond the deal, IBM’s Power-based RISC business fell 3.1 percent, but its System z mainframe unit saw 15 percent revenue growth. Overall, the server businesses IBM kept showed a 5.1 percent growth.
5Cisco Continues Its Growth Patterns
6Vendors Just Keep on Shipping
7Volume Systems by the Volume
8Good News at the High End As Well
9The Midrange Continues to Get Squeezed
10The Growing Demand for x86
11IBM’s Mainframes Buoy the Non-x86 Market
Revenue for those systems not powered by x86 chips from Intel or Advanced Micro Devices—such as RISC- and Itanium-based servers—fell 5.5 percent in the third quarter after a strong first quarter and a slight decline in the second, IDC said. IBM’s System z mainframe business saw 15 percent growth year over year—led by its z13 refresh—which helped soften the decline.
12Data Centers Embrace Rack-Based Architecture
Rack-optimized system revenue grew 9.7 percent and—by contributing 125 percent to unit growth and 112 percent to revenue growth—kept the overall server market from declining, IDC said. In the third quarter, more than 130,000 extra units in this form factor shipped over the same period last year, adding an extra $727 million to the overall market. HPE and Dell contributed to more than half the growth.
13Asia-Pacific Takes the Lead in Server Revenue
In the first two quarters, the United States was number one in server revenue, but the Asia-Pacific region took the top spot, with 24 percent revenue growth, thanks to 32.4 percent growth in China, IDC said. The U.S. growth rate was 4.2 percent. China’s strength was seen in Gartner’s list of top vendors in server shipments, where the country’s Huawei and Inspur ranked fourth and fifth.
14A Short-Term Look at the Market
The refreshes driven by Microsoft’s ending support for Windows Server 2003 and Intel’s Grantley release are ending, but there are opportunities around Microsoft’s ending support for SQL Server 2005 in April 2016. IDC estimates that there are about 800,000 servers worldwide still running the software.
15Emerging Workloads Will Drive Long-Term Growth
Software-defined, disaggregated servers and systems designed to be deployed at the edge of networks for the Internet of things will fuel growth down the road, according to IDC.