I am thrilled to report that—for the first time ever—Dell is the worldwide leader in server unit and revenue share. Worldwide, Dell maintained its global x86 server leadership for the fourth quarter in a row with 18.8% unit share. Additionally, Dell’s x86 revenue share increased 37.9% year over year.
To the customers and partners who have chosen Dell PowerEdge, thank you for helping us achieve these milestones. Our growth would not be possible without your support and validation. As I sit with customers around the world, it’s their candid feedback and their innovative ideas that fuel us. We’re committed to offering industry-leading solutions in a simple way that makes life easier.
We are committed to continually investing in server innovation to ensure our servers are meeting the needs of the changing market. For example, earlier this year we launched our 14th generation of PowerEdge servers—the most innovative portfolio of servers in the industry. Each server has a scalable business architecture, intelligent automation and integrated security. These next-generation servers have been recognized for their innovative design and architecture by Red Dot Product Design, and the PowerEdge R640 and R740xd both received the IT Pro “Editor’s Choice” award with 5-star ratings.
Last year, we started seeing momentum building among many new technology trends. Our customers are driving innovation in their businesses with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), edge computing, and IoT. Our innovative, customer-inspired approach allows us to better identify customer needs and customize our PowerEdge portfolio to help meet the new demands required by emerging technology. The latest generation of Dell PowerEdge servers support accelerator-optimized architectures with GPUs and FPGAs to help increase the velocity of processing and compute at the edge. We’re even packing impressive processing power into small form factors to enable IoT.
A recent example of our ability to provide our customers with the flexibility that they need to evolve with the technology is the work that we’ve done with Otto Motors—a business dedicated to putting robots into the world’s dirtiest and deadliest jobs. The workloads that their data center requires drove unprecedented demand for compute power. Having PowerEdge servers at the foundation of their data center’s infrastructure allows them to scale to meet the complex testing requirements and deployment that the increasing compute power demanded. Thus, they could continue their mission of democratizing robotic technology for customers of all sizes.
Looking ahead, we expect an evolution within server design, to adapt to the increase of data and to allow fast data access and storage required with the growing use of AI. Server technology changes will be driven by non-volatile memory appearing in various forms, and the adoption of massive non-volatile memory will prompt people to change their methods of developing operating systems, virtual layers and applications, and to make their systems safer for storing data. Furthermore, as workloads evolve toward cloud to core to edge, Dell will continue to innovate for and support our customers looking to implement emerging technologies such as AI, ML and IoT. As the environments where this technology needs to live moves away from the core and towards the edge, distributed security and hardware built to withstand harsh environments will be increasingly critical. Real-time encryption using FPGAs and solutions such as our PowerEdge ruggedized servers, which can operate in temperatures of 23–131°F, or our new PowerEdge C4140 built for ML/AI, are examples of solutions we provide to make these exciting technologies real for our customers
2017 was a phenomenal year for PowerEdge servers, but we’re just getting started. In the coming year, we’ll build on this success, and continue to engage with our customers to deliver the foundational tools of a modern data center. I look forward to sharing that progress with you in 2018.
To stay engaged, and to follow the success stories of our PowerEdge customers, join the conversation at @DellServers.
Note: IDC declares a statistical tie in the worldwide server market when there is a difference of one percent or less in the share of revenues or shipments among two or more vendors. Based on Units. Data from IDC Quarterly Server Tracker, 2017Q3