HP sustains server shipment leadership

BANGALORE: Hewlett-Packard (HP) once again held sway with a leadership position in the total server units shipped in the first calendar quarter of 2007, according to analyst firm IDC. This is HP’s twentieth consecutive quarter of leadership in server shipment.

HP grew overall server shipments by 16.6 per cent in the first quarter with a growth rate faster than the top 10 vendors. Its ProLiant, Integrity and BladeSystem families captured 33.6 per cent shipment share in the first quarter.

“The strong growth in ProLiant, Integrity and BladeSystem shows not only the breadth and value of our portfolio, but also the strong customer acceptance from midsized businesses through large enterprises and high-performance computing customers,” said Mark Hudson, vice president of marketing, Enterprise Storage and Servers, HP.

While HP again tied for No. 1 in worldwide Q1 server factory revenue for the third year in a row, it also maintained the lead as the top x86 server vendor. It showed continued leadership as the number one blade server vendor in the first quarter with 45.1 per cent total shipment share, a year-over-year growth of 84.9 per cent.

Fueled by its BladeSystem c-Class architecture and the use of blades in the high-performance computing market, the company took more than five points of sequential market share at the expense of IBM and Dell in the first quarter and outpaced the whole worldwide blade server market.

“Today’s results from IDC demonstrate HP’s formidable strength as a technology provider and confirm that we’re meeting and exceeding customer needs,” added Hudson.