Big names see changes in servers and storage top ten All is not well in server world: while new releases such as Intel's Grantley Xeon CPU launch and Web data center investments are offsetting weak high-end server demand, IDC estimates global server revenue rose 1.9% just yr/yr in Q4 to $14.5bn, and Gartner estimates it rose 2.2% to $14bn.
These figures compare with Q3 growth estimates of 4.8% and 1.7%, respectively. Likewise, IDC estimates global enterprise storage revenue rose 7.2% yr/yr in Q4, aided by Web investments and healthy demand for mid-range systems featuring integrated flash. Q3 growth was pegged at 5.1%.IBM had a rough time its both the server and storage markets: IDC believes its storage share fell to 9% from 12.7% a year earlier, and Gartner estimates its server revenue fell 14% if one excludes its x86 server unit, which was just sold to Lenovo.
HP fared a little better, it says: IDC has its server share falling fractionally to 26.8% (still top over all), and its storage share falling to 13.8% from 14.1%. The company's x86 server unit has been gaining ground against IBM's former business, but its high-end server sales remain weak. Cisco's UCS server line (recently refreshed) continues to gain ground: Its share rose to 5.3% (fifth place) from 4.5%, with full-year revenue pegged at $2.9bn. With the help of aggressive pricing and x86 growth, Dell's server share rose to 16.7% from 15.2%, while its storage share slipped to 9% (tied for third) from 9.2%.
Lenovo claimed a 7.6% server share thanks to the IBM deal, kicking Oracle out of the top-5 along the way. EMC, whose high-end storage sales have been pressured (mid-range/flash demand has been better), saw its storage share drop to 22.2% (still top) from 23.1%. NetApp, which posted an FQ3 with miss and light guidance last month amid tough mid-range competition from EMC and others, saw its share drop to 7.2% from 8%. Not surprisingly, the white-label hardware beloved by Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. continued to take share. IDC estimates such hardware, referred to as ODM Direct, claimed server and storage shares of 8.2% and 12.8% vs. 6.4% and 9.9% a year ago. Sales of x86 servers, the lion's share of which run on Intel CPUs, rose 7.1% to $11.5bn. Sales of non-x86 servers fell 14% to $3bn, thanks to declining demand for both mainframes and UNIX servers running proprietary RISC CPUs. "Early-stage revenue" was seen for ARM servers (below), largely via HP's Moonshot line.
