Digital Lifescapes

Worldwide converged systems market revenue increased 9.1 percent year-over -year to $3.6 billion during the fourth quarter of 2017 (4Q17), according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Full-year sales surpassed $12.5 billion in 2017, representing a 9.4 percenet increase over the previous year and the first time the market surpassed $12 billion in a calendar year. Converged Systems Market Development "The number of organizations deploying converged systems continued to expand through 2017," said Eric Sheppard, research vice president at IDC . Growing demand drove the total market value. While not all market segments increased during the year, those that did grow were able to provide considerable benefits related to the most core infrastructure challenges facing today's data centers. IDC's converged systems market view offers three segments: certified reference systems & integrated infrastructure, integrated platforms, and h...

IT Vendor revenue in the worldwide server market increased 19.9 percent year-over-year to reach $17 billion in the third quarter of 2017 (3Q17), according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). While demand from cloud computing service providers has driven overall market performance in the past, other areas of the server market are beginning to show growth. Worldwide server shipments increased 11.1 percent year-over-year to 2.67 million units in 3Q17. Server Systems Market Development Volume server revenue increased by 19.3 percent to $14.2 billion, while midrange server revenue grew 26.9 percent to $1.4 billion. High-end systems grew 19.4 percent to $1.3 billion, benefiting from the IBM z14 launch this quarter. That said, IDC expects continued long-term secular declines in high-end system revenue, with short periods of growth related to major platform refreshes. "Hyperscalers continued driving volume demand in the third quarter, with Amazon ...

The shift to public cloud computing continues to impact on-premises IT data centers. Vendor revenue in the worldwide server market declined 4.6 percent year-over-year to $11.8 billion in the first quarter of 2017 (1Q17), according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Overall server market growth continues to slow down with most hyperscale service providers waiting until the second half of the year for new investment. High-end server sales continue to be a drag on overall market performance. The market has also been negatively affected by DRAM pricing issues. Worldwide server shipments increased 1.4 percent year over year to 2.21 million units in 1Q17. That said, one customer accounted for more than 10 percent of the servers shipped in 1Q17. IT Server Market Development Volume server revenue declined by 3.4 percent to $9.5 billion, while mid-range server revenue grew 16.5 percent to $1.3 billion. Demand for high-end systems experienced a year-over-...

Vendor revenue in the overall worldwide computing server market declined 4.6 percent year-over-year to $14.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016 (4Q16), according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC). Server market growth has slowed in part due to maturity of the hyperscale data center growth, and from declining high-end server deployments. In addition, the enterprise refresh cycle of 2015 had created less demand in 2016. Worldwide server shipments decreased 3.5 percent to 2.55 million units in 4Q16 when compared with the same year-ago period. Computing Server Market Development On a year-over-year basis, volume and mid-range system revenue decreased 3.3 percent and 6.1 percent in 4Q16 to $11.2 billion and $1.4 billion, respectively. Server demand across the enterprise market was soft for the quarter. Meanwhile, 4Q16 demand for high-end systems experienced a year-over-year revenue decline of 10.7 percent to $2.0 billion. IDC expects continued l...

More enterprise data centers are being impacted by a shift to cloud-based hosted service offerings. CIOs have acknowledged that when it comes to commodity x86 servers, the hyperscale service providers are often much better at delivering IT infrastructure for mainstream workloads. With the exception of high-performance computing (HPC) systems and purpose-built mainframes or supercomputers, it's becoming increasing difficult to justify maintaining a corporate data center. Meanwhile, the number of large data centers operated by hyperscale service providers reached the 300 mark in December of 2016, after a flurry of year-end data center openings by the leading providers. One notable feature of the global footprint is that despite a major ongoing push to locate new operations in countries around the world, the U.S. market still accounts for 45 percent of major cloud and internet data center sites, according to the latest worldwide market study by Synergy Research Group (SRG). Hype...