Linux surmounts Windows in global server growth

According to the key findings of IDC's worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker,

Linux server sales revenues increased by 56.9 per cent and unit shipments at

46.4 per cent, while Windows servers posted double-digit growth, with revenues

up by 16.4 per cent and unit shipments up by 26.5 per cent in year-over-year

comparison.

Among the other key findings, factory revenue in the worldwide server market

grew at 7.3 per cent y-o-y to $11.5 billion in the first quarter of 2004,

marking the fourth consecutive quarter of positive overall growth. It was also

the second consecutive quarter in which all major categories of the worldwide

server market grew when compared to the same period in the previous year.

As per the report, Dell and Sun Microsystems were in a statistical tie for

the number third spot in the rankings of server vendors, based on worldwide

factory revenue results that differed by less than 1per cent.

Some of the other results were IBM’s holding on to its numero uno spot in

the worldwide server systems market with 29.7 per cent market share in factory

revenue, while in terms of shipment HP took the cake though, however, in factory

revenue it achieved a second spot with 26.9 per cent share.

The breadth of growth shows that demand for server systems is on the rise,

although seasonal variations caused first-quarter revenues to be less than

fourth-quarter revenues. "IT spending is clearly trending upward and IT

organizations are beginning to rebuild their computing infrastructure,” said

Vernon Turner, group vice president of Global Enterprise Server Solutions at

IDC.

The x86 server market dynamics continued to be strong in the first quarter of

2004, with factory revenue growing 14.1 per cent to $5.1 billion worldwide,

while unit shipments grew 23.5 per cent to more than 1.3 million servers

worldwide, the release stated.

The worldwide server market continues to show signs of a strong recovery,

with four consecutive quarters of growth in factory revenue. Apparently, the

server-market landscape is undergoing major change as the influence of new

technologies, including Linux, clustering, and server blades, is forging new

deployments of IT infrastructure.

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker is a quantitative tool for analyzing

the global server market on a quarterly basis. The Tracker includes quarterly

shipments (both ISS and upgrades) and revenues (both customer and factory),

segmented by vendor, family, model, region, operating system, price band, CPU

type, and architecture.