Demand for Linux servers reaches record levels

After four consecutive quarterly increases, revenue for midrange enterprise servers declined 11.5 per cent year over year and the high-end enterprise server market showed a 1.7 per cent decline year over year, the fifth consecutive quarter of declining revenue for high-end enterprise servers.

"The volume server market continues to evolve as richer server configurations driven by both scale-out cluster implementations and scale-up server virtualisation initiatives continue to drive increased customer spending," said Matthew Eastwood, programme vice president of IDC's Worldwide Server Group.

"However, even in the volume segment the quarterly unit shipment growth of 11.5 per cent was two-thirds the year-over-year unit growth rate observed in the fourth quarter of 2004, illustrating a transition towards more richly configured systems in the market.

"This evolution is driven by IT managers' increased desire to consolidate and virtualise their server infrastructures as they seek to maintain balanced and manageable IT growth in the future."

In terms of vendor performance IBM retained the number one spot in the worldwide server systems market with 38.4 per cent market share in factory revenue, growing its revenue by 0.8 per cent when compared to the same quarter one year ago.

HP continued to hold the number two spot in terms of factory revenue with 26.8 per cent share, growing revenue 3.8 per cent compared to the fourth quarter of 2004.

Dell maintained third place with 9.6 per cent factory revenue market share in the fourth quarter of 2005.

Based on unit shipments, HP maintained the number one position worldwide with 30.2 per cent server shipment share, growing shipments 8.8 per cent year over year.

Dell maintained the number two spot in terms of worldwide server shipments with 23.3 per cent share, up from 21.3 per cent.