IBM, HP Tied for First in Worldwide Server Market: IDC

IBM, fueled by a 24.5 percent jump in revenues, moved into a statistical tie with Hewlett-Packard as the world’s top server vendor, according to second-quarter market numbers from market research firm IDC.

IBM saw growth in all segments, including a 61.1 percent jump in revenue — to $1.2 billion — from its System z mainframe business over the same period in 2010, IDC analysts said in their report released Aug. 23. Big Blue also saw growth in its System x and Power System servers.

IBM edged HP, grabbing 30.5 percent market share in the quarter, compared with HP’s 29.8 percent, which IDC analysts called a statistical tie. For its part, HP server revenues grew 9.3 percent, driven in large part by solid demand for its x86-based ProLiant systems, both traditional servers and blades, IDC analysts said.

Rounding out the top five were Dell in third place, with 13.8 percent market share on 5.1 percent revenue growth — thanks to demand from SMBs — and Oracle and Fujitsu tied for fourth, with 7.2 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively, according to IDC. Oracle’ s revenue jumped 4.2 percent over the second quarter in 2010, fueled by growing demand for x86-based Exadata database systems. Meanwhile, Fujitsu revenues rose 133.6 percent due to the massive K-computer high-performance computing (HPC) system in Japan.

The vendors numbers were part of a larger trend that saw worldwide server revenues grow 17.9 percent, to $13.2 billion, with shipments rising 8.5 percent to 2.1 million units. The growth was across all segments — volume, midrange and high-end system — with demand for mainframes, Unix, Linux and Windows servers all rising.

New Unix systems from IBM, HP and Oracle helped fuel the growth, as did new mainframe systems from IBM. Jean Bozman, research vice president for enterprise servers at IDC, said that another driver was businesses refreshing their server environments after holding off from making purchases during the recession and slow recovery. Enterprises need the extra horsepower of the new systems, Bozman said in an interview with eWEEK.

You can only hold off for so long, she said.

To read the original eWeek article, click here: IBM, HP in Tie for Worldwide Server Lead: IDC