According to the latest report from the research firm IDC, the Linux and Windows servers recorded a growth of 23.8% in shipments in the second quarter of 2010 year on year basis while the growth in the previous quarter stood at 23%.
The growth in shipments is the highest recorded in five years and the fastest revenue growth in three years for the Linux and Windows servers, showed the IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker. It said that the over all revenue in server market grew 11 percent to $10.9 billion from period last year.
"The server market is at a crossroads. This is the fourth consecutive quarter of improving server market demand and the fastest quarterly server revenue growth IDC has reported in more than 5 years," said Matt Eastwood, group VP of enterprise platforms at IDC.
The demand for the servers remained high because firms choose to upgrade their fleet of servers as they were operating on due units that were not replaced due to the economic slowdown.
The demand for Microsoft Windows servers went up mainly due to the demand for ‘x86 servers’ and it also helped manufacturers such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell to record stronger sales. IDC analyst expects the growth in the segment to spread to Unix and mainframe platforms in the second half of 2010. It said that the over all revenue in server market grew 11 percent to $10.9 billion from period last year.
IDC expects the demand for non-x86 servers as some of the manufacturers have refreshed their offerings. The customers will be offered IBM's Power7 systems and Oracle's SPARC servers, which belonged to Sun Microsystems acquired by Oracle and HP’s new Integrity system powered by Intel's latest Itanium processor.
The revenue from Linux server rose 30% to $1.8 billion in the quarter. Linux servers account for 16.8% of all server revenue which an increase of 2.5% over the second quarter of last year, IDC said.
The x86 servers market continues to grow while RISC, Itanium and mainframes server markets have stagnated for record a fall. The sales for non x-86 servers fell for the fifth consecutive quarter. The sales from non x-86 servers fell 16% year-over-year to $3.9 billion in the second quarter, according to the firm.
IDC, however, expects the demand for non-x86 servers as some of the manufacturers have refreshed their offerings. The customers will be offered IBM's Power7 systems and Oracle's SPARC servers, which belonged to Sun Microsystems acquired by Oracle and HP’s new Integrity system powered by Intel's latest Itanium processor.
In the overall server market, HP led the market with 32.5% of the worldwide server revenues ahead of IBM with 29.8%, and Dell, which represented 15.6%. the other two firms in the top five were Oracle and Fujitsu.
