System iNetwork

November 30, 2009

Gartner Says Server Market Stabilizing

While worldwide server shipments for the third quarter of 2009 declined 17.1 percent over the same quarter as last year, with server revenue dropping 15.5 percent, research firm Gartner is seeing signs of light.

"It is important to put the yearly declines into perspective," notes Jeffrey Hewitt, a vice president of research for Gartner. "Looking at the third quarter results from the sequential perspective, they showed an increase of 13.8 percent in shipments and 10.2 percent in revenues when compared to the second quarter of this year. That suggests that the market as a whole is showing signs of stabilization as we move toward the end of 2009."

Worldwide server revenues totaled $10.7 billion for the quarter on worldwide server shipments of 1.2 million units.

IBM held the revenue lead in the worldwide server market for the quarter (see Table 1), staying ahead of HP by 1.5 percent. Of the five major vendors Gartner tracks, Dell was the only company to squeak out less than double-digit declines in revenue year over year. However, Gartner's research shows that four of the top tier vendors experienced sequential revenue growth (except Sun Microsystems, which posted the biggest relative drops in both revenue and shipments).

In server shipments, Gartner reports Hewlett-Packard retained its worldwide server shipment lead, as its market share reached 32.1 percent for the quarter. Dell maintained the No. 2 spot with a 22.8 percent share (see Table 2). IBM came in third with 13.3 percent.

Interestingly, while the global server providers all posted year-on-year shipment declines for the quarter, all of the vendors experienced sequential shipment increases for the period.

IBM's Spin

IBM, of course, looks at Gartner's numbers through blue glasses: IBM continues to take share from HP in x86 servers, noting that HP's play to flip the Compaq installed base has run its course--while crediting IBM's improved sales and channels models, along with its System x product set. IBM gained 2.2 points of revenue share in x86, with nearly 5 percent Blade growth. This was the second quarter of revenue share gains for IBM in the x86 market, IBM says, taking share at HP's expense.

As for Unix, IBM gained 4.2 points of revenue share year over year. No doubt IBM saw at least some benefit from the uncertain winds blowing around the Sun-Oracle acquisition. Last month, IBM announced that 235 customers moved workloads to IBM servers and storage systems from Sun and HP in the third quarter. A total of 84 clients moved to IBM Power Systems from Sun in the third quarter, IBM says, while an additional 44 clients moved to IBM Power from HP.

Gartner, unfortunately, does not break out the IBM i operating system in its public reports.

Posted by cmaxcer at November 30, 2009 9:43 AM