Considering a hurdles that a server biz has faced in new months, tellurian server shipments have remained comparatively healthy, with revenues impacted mostly by disappearing IBM mainframe sales.
Server shipments in a final entertain of 2011 were adversely impacted by a hoop expostulate shortages from a flooding in Thailand, where about a entertain of a world’s disks and many subcomponents are manufactured. In addition, shipments were approaching impacted a bit by delays of Intel and AMD’s arriving Xeon and Opteron server-chip launches.
Still and all, business is pretty good for server makers.
The analysts during Gartner, that usually handed out their news cards to server makers for Q4 and a full year, reckon that a universe consumed 2.5 million servers in a final 3 months of final year, adult 4.5 per cent from a before year’s fourth quarter. Revenues, however, were down by 5.4 per cent to $13.91bn.
While there were a lot of factors contributing to a income decline, one of a vital ones – according to Jeffrey Hewitt, a investigate VP during Gartner who does a box counting – was a approaching decrease of IBM’s System z mainframe sales as a zEnterprise 114 and 196 machines come to a finish of their cycle.
Hewitt tells El Reg that IBM’s System z mainframe sales fell by 31 per cent to $1.37bn in Q4. Plummeting sales of Unix servers formed on RISC and Itanium servers done by HP, Oracle, and Fujitsu also contributed to a altogether server income decline.
The medium boost in x86 server shipments – usually underneath 116,000 units – simply could not fill in a income opening done by mainframe and Unix server declines. Without a hoop shortages, Hewitt says that maybe another integrate hundred thousand x86 servers competence have shipped in Q4, and if we take a normal offered cost of an x86 box in a entertain and mixed it by 200,000 units (just for fun), we get $765.6m in incremental revenues. That additional x86 server iron would have put sales during a same level, some-more or less, as final year’s Q4, even with a mainframe and Unix drops.
In a quarter, Gartner calculates that x86 appurtenance accounted for 2.45 million units, and gathering $9.38bn in revenues worldwide. That’s 5 per cent expansion in shipments and 2.6 per cent expansion in revenues compared to a year ago.
HP remained a tip shipper of x86 iron, with 696,648 boxes out a bureau doorway (down 7.7 per cent) and sales of $3.04bn (down 11.3 per cent). Dell is entrance on strong, utterly in a Americas region, and managed to boost x86 server shipments (the usually kind it sells) by 11.2 per cent to 573,125 units, and revenues by 7.3 per cent to $2.06bn – Dell is apparently on a hurl offered lots of cheaper x86 boxes.
IBM’s System x business was down a smidgen (two-tenths of a point) to 304,581 units and $1.66bn in revenues, off 1.6 per cent.
On a Unix front, sales were off 8 per cent opposite all vendors to $2.73bn. IBM’s Power Systems iron was a usually Unix height to uncover growth, with sales adult 18 per cent to $1.57bn, according to Gartner’s estimates, while HP’s Integrity and Superdome platforms stomached a 32.3 per cent decrease to $561.5m and Oracle’s Sparc/Solaris height sales forsaken 23.8 per cent to $485.8m.
Fujitsu had a 44.2 per cent decrease in Unix sales to a small $43.2m, and even forsaken behind France’s Groupe Bull in a Unix sales rankings. Bull resells IBM’s Power Systems iron underneath a possess code and had 63.5m in revenues from these boxes, off 6.2 per cent from a year-ago period.
Of course, what everybody in a server pole is examination is networking hulk and server-seller wannabe Cisco Systems, that like Dell usually sells x86-based iron. (And specifically, usually Intel Xeon formed iron so far.)
Hewitt tells El Reg that Cisco accounted for about 8 per cent of blade server shipments and about 10 per cent of blade server revenues in a quarter, that puts it forward of Dell in blade revenues and behind Dell in blade shipments. (HP and IBM are a leaders in blades and have been going behind and onward for years there, though HP is winning with 44 per cent of shipments compared to IBM’s 21 per cent.)
Taking into comment both shelve and blade servers, Cisco accounted for 1.8 per cent of all shipments (a small some-more than 45,000 machines) and ranked sixth behind Lenovo by usually a few thousand machines. However, Cisco’s Unified Computing System blade and shelve servers competition integrated networking, and that helps expostulate adult a ASPs, so Cisco indeed ranked sixth worldwide in server sales in Q4, with $321.3m in revenues, adult 123.4 per cent.
Across all x86 servers, Cisco already ranks fourth in a universe forward of Fujitsu, though has a prolonged approach to go to locate IBM, that generates some-more than 5 times as most sales from a System x line.
It’s protected to contend that Cisco has determined itself in servers and is holding share. How most some-more share can it steal? It will take a few some-more years to unequivocally tell.
When we supplement it all adult in Q4, IBM had $4.68bn in server sales, down 10.2 per cent, and kick HP for a tip income ranking with a gentle domain as HP’s sales sunk 16 per cent to $3.74bn. (It wasn’t too prolonged ago when HP was on top.)
Dell came in third with a $2.06bn, followed by Oracle with $735.4m, down usually 8.7 per cent. If we assume that all that is not Sparc/Solaris from Oracle is some form of x86-based Exadata, Exalogic, or Exalytics machine, afterwards a Exa line did utterly good with sales adult 48.4 per cent to $249.6m.
Fujitsu dull out a tip tier server makers with $496.2m in revenues in a fourth quarter, off 11.5 per cent. Other vendors, bolstered by Cisco and a few other players, grew 25 per cent to $2.19bn.
For a full year, companies consumed 9.52 million servers, adult 7 per cent, and that generated $52.8bn in revenues, adult 7.9 per cent.
So what is 2012 going to demeanour like? Probably a lot like 2011, usually with somewhat opposite processor and complement names.
“The opinion for 2012 suggests that expansion will continue,” Hewitt pronounced in a matter concomitant a Gartner server figures. “These increases continue to be buffered by a use of x86 server virtualization to connect earthy machines as they are replaced, though a introduction of new processors from Intel and AMD is approaching to assistance fuel and trigger a new turn of server deputy cycles.” ®