x86 continues to rule server space

MUMBAI, INDIA: In the fourth quarter of 2014, worldwide server shipments increased 4.8 per cent year over year, while revenue grew 2.2 per cent from the fourth quarter of 2013, according to Gartner, Inc. In all of 2014, worldwide server shipments grew 2.2 per cent, and server revenue increased 0.8 per cent.

"There were several factors that produced the strong growth in the server market in 2014," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. "On a worldwide basis, hyperscale data center deployments as well as service provider installations drove the x86-based server market upward. Enterprises had less unit growth impact because of the ongoing presence of physical server consolidation through x86-server virtualization. This overall market growth developed despite declines in both mainframe and Unix platforms."

In the fourth quarter of 2014, the regions with the highest growth rates in terms of unit shipments were the Middle East and Africa (10.7 per cent), Asia/Pacific (9.1 per cent) and North America (7.6 per cent).

2014 was a relatively moderate growth year in the server market with overall increases of 2.2 per cent in shipments and 0.8 percent in revenue. x86 servers continue to be the predominant platform used for large-scale data center buildouts across the globe, and the growth of integrated systems, while still relatively small as an overall percentage of the hardware infrastructure market, also provided some growth contribution to the x86 server space for the year. The outlook for 2015 suggests that modest growth will continue in the server space on the whole.