IBM and HP lead server market growth in Q4 2010

The global server market shot up radically at the end of last year, according to industry watcher IDC, which said that IBM leads the market with a 37 per cent share.

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker reported factory revenues up by 15 per cent year over year in the fourth quarter to $15bn. This was the highest quarterly revenue seen in three years and the fourth consecutive quarterly gain.

Shipments increased at a lesser rate but still saw six per cent growth, taking them up to 2.1 million units for the quarter. Shipments for the full year totalled 7.6 million and saw revenues of $48.1bn.

Gains were not seen across the board, however, and the midrange market saw a 2.1 per cent decline in revenues.

High-end servers did the opposite, though, and here the analysts saw a 29.1 per cent increase in revenues when compared against the same quarter last year.

It was suggested that this was because many firms were choosing to invest in large datacentres and emerging technologies including virtualisation.

"Non-x86 platforms contributed significantly to the server market recovery in the fourth quarter and it remains clear that a variety of heterogeneous server platforms remain an integral part of a comprehensive enterprise IT strategy today," said Matt Eastwood, group vice president of IDC's Enterprise Platforms Group.

"At the same time, datacentres are being optimised to support virtualisation, automation, convergence, workload-optimised systems and cloud strategies in large and small organisations around the globe."

IBM was the biggest shipper and, according to IDC, has a 37.4 per cent market share. The firm saw good demand for its System z mainframes, and "continued demand" for x86-based System x servers.

HP was the second biggest shipper and holds a 29.9 per cent share. Its revenues fell by 13.2 per cent over the period, but again IDC said that it had benefited from demand for its x86-based systems, in this case the ProLiant servers.

Jean S. Bozman, research vice president for IDC's Enterprise Platforms Group, said that many firms had decided to free up funds in the last quarter and invest in hybrid solutions and mainframes.

"Pent-up demand within the installed base following high-end server declines in 2009 and 2010 was a key driver in the mainframe revenue increase, showing the need for increased capacity and customer support of this approach to hybrid-systems computing," he said.

Linux server revenues also increased, and IDC reported that the hardware now takes 17 per cent of the entire market revenue, an increase of 1.8 per cent against the same period last year.

Shipments increased by just under 10 per cent, and Unix servers were flat, the analysts added.