WASHINGTON: Gartner has released new figures about the state of server shipments worldwide, and even though growth has been recorded, that’s not real a success story yet.
According to its figures, global servers shipment increased 1.7 percent year-on-year, but revenue declined 2.3 percent. The research company says this means that servers which were being sold same time last year were more expensive than the ones being sold now. “Although revenue declined, the first quarter of 2016 continued with a trend of low-level shipments growth on a global level with a variation in results by region”, says Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner.
“The drop in revenues in light of shipment increases demonstrates that the servers that shipped during the period had lower average selling prices than those that shipped in the same time frame last year”.
Looking at specific regions, it is only Asia/Pacific that recorded growth in both revenue (9.7 percent) and shipments (8.4 percent). Others recorded declines in either one of these parameters. “The real driver of global growth continues to be the hyperscale data centre segment. The enterprise and small or midsize business segments remain relatively flat as end users in these segments accommodated their increased application requirements through virtualization and considered cloud alternatives”, Mr Hewitt says.
Looking at the market share, it’s HPE that leads the pack with 25.2 percent, followed by Dell, IBM, Lenovo, and Cisco. “This year is set to be another challenging year for server vendors focused on the EMEA region”, says Adrian O’Connell, research director at Gartner. “Ongoing business concerns combined with the consolidation pressures of virtualization and cloud delivery led to the weakest start to the year from a volume perspective since the downturn in 2009”.
