Analysts predict brighter future for Itanium

Itanium servers are expected to outgrow the overall server market

Sales of servers powered by Intel's high-end Itanium processors are set to grow to $6.6bn by 2009, analyst firm IDC projected in a new study.

Itanium servers are expected to outgrow the overall server market with 35 per cent compound annual growth, versus 3.4 per cent for the overall market, the study claimed.

The Intel chip architecture has shown disappointing sales since its launch and some market analysts and competitors have proclaimed the architecture dead.

But the 500 enterprise users interviewed for the IDC study showed a high customer satisfaction with the systems.

IDC's research also revealed positive attitudes in the marketplace regarding the Itanium platform.

Awareness, purchase intent and current customer satisfaction rated highly among IDC's Enterprise Server Customer Panel, according to Matthew Eastwood, programme vice president for enterprise server research at IDC.

HP is the largest maker of Itanium servers, claiming $1.6bn in sales in 2005 for its Integrity servers which incorporate the chips.