Given the current economic climate it’s nice to receive some good news. In a recent article by Alex Barrett from SearchDataCenter.com, he points out that Dell is, “re-emerging as a strong data center player, with two separate surveys of data center buyers showing increased demand for its x86 servers compared with HP and IBM, its primary competition.”
The article also calls out a SearchDataCenter.com survey highlighting how Dell is gaining significant market share for servers against its primary competitor, Hewlett-Packard, going from second place at 29.9% of the server market versus HP's 38% in 2009, to first place with 35.1% versus HP's 34.1%.
One of the most telling parts of the article is the recognition that “demand for Dell blades also increased, taking market share away from IBM. In 2009, HP and IBM dominated the blade space with 35.2% and 33.2% of the market, respectively, to Dell's 21.6%. In 2010, HP cemented its position at 39.1%, but Dell chipped away at IBM's position, moving to 24.6% share compared with IBM's 26.6%.”
This server market momentum was also validated in recent IDC numbers which revealed the following;
- x86 server revenues continued to accelerate in 1Q10, growing 33.6% in the quarter to $6.8 billion worldwide as unit shipments increased 25.7% to 1.8 million servers. This was the fastest year-over-year factory revenue growth for x86 servers in more than 10 years, helping HP, Dell, and IBM to all gain market share.
- Overall, Dell gained 5.1 points of share year-to-year on strong 51.9% revenue growth driven by surging demand from enterprise and SMB customers.
- The market for non-x86 servers, including servers based on RISC, EPIC, and CISC processors, declined 25.9% year over year to $3.6 billion in 1Q10. This is the fourth consecutive quarter that non-x86 servers have been outperformed in the market by x86 servers.
- Bladed servers, including x86, EPIC, and RISC blades, accounted for $1.4 billion in revenues, representing 13.6% of quarterly server market revenue. More than 90% of all blade revenue is driven by x86 systems, a segment in which blades now represent 18.8% of all x86 server revenue.
These trends are a good sign for Dell. They validate an open, capable and affordable enterprise strategy for our customers that are based on flexibility and choice. And when you factor in the recent acquisitions of Scalent, Ocarina Networks and 3PAR, it is becoming clear Dell is delivering more comprehensive solutions that span from the client to the world’s most sophisticated data centers.