In the fourth quarter of 2014, worldwide server shipments increased 4,8% year-over-year, while revenue grew 2,2% from the fourth quarter of 2013, according to Gartner.
In all of 2014, worldwide server shipments grew 2,2%, and server revenue increased 0,8%.
“There were several factors that produced the strong growth in the server market in 2014,” says Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice-president at Gartner.
“On a worldwide basis, hyperscale data centre 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 virtualisation. 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%), Asia/Pacific (9,1%) and North America (7,6%).
HP led the worldwide server market based on revenue in the fourth quarter of 2014, but only grew 1,5% year-over-year. The company ended the year with $3,9-billion in revenue for a total share of 27,9% worldwide.
IBM experienced a decline of 50,6% while Lenovo experienced strong growth of 743,4%. The significant changes in IBM’s and Lenovo’s growth rates are due to the completion of the sale of IBM’s x86 server business to Lenovo in the fourth quarter.
In server shipments, HP remained the worldwide leader for the fourth quarter of 2014, even as its shipments declined 11%. HP’s revenue increase compared with its shipment decline suggests a shift to sales of servers with richer
configurations and relatively higher average selling prices to continue to support server consolidation through virtualisation, in addition to a tough comparison when the company had large hyperscale deals a year ago.
x86 server demand increased in shipments by 5,1% and revenue by 8,2% for the fourth quarter of 2014.
For the full year, 2014 was a relatively moderate growth year in the server market with overall increases of 2,2% in shipments and 0.8 percent in revenue.
x86 servers continue to be the predominant platform used for large-scale data centre 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.
In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), server shipments in the fourth quarter of 2014 declined 0,7%, while server revenue grew 1,2%, totalling $3,6-billion. In 2014, server shipments declined 2,5% and server revenue grew 2,1%.
“Despite considerable market pressures, the fourth-quarter server results in EMEA were unremarkable,” says Errol Rasit, research director at Gartner. “The region saw growth prospects related to installed-base refresh, big data projects and cloud computing expansion; however, political and economic instability, combined with US dollar strength, dampened market demand in EMEA.”
