Report: Server Revenue & Shipments Increased Worldwide in 4th Qtr 2015

Gartner's Q4 server revenue and shipping report shows that just leading in shipments does not equal an increase in revenue.

Richard Hay, Senior Content Producer

March 11, 2016

2 Min Read
Report: Server Revenue & Shipments Increased Worldwide in 4th Qtr 2015

According to Gartner, overall 2015 server shipments worldwide increased by 9.9 percent alongside an increase of 10.1 percent in server revenues.

The latest report from Gartner, focused on the fourth quarter of 2015, shows just one company taking a hit in their year over year on both revenue and server shipments.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), the newly formed company from the split of HP into separate enterprise and consumer companies, showed a 2.2 percent drop in server revenues compared to the same period in the previous year. Gartner also shows a 2.6 percent drop in server shipments between the same two periods.

The reason for the drops for HPE, according to Gartner, include:

The primary decline in HPE's server shipments can be attributed to a global weakness in Windows-based x86 servers, while the decline in revenue was driven mostly by a drop in RISC/Itanium Unix server sales for the period.

The only other company to see a decrease in the fourth quarter was Dell with just a .3 percent drop in server hardware shipments.

Among the other companies in the report, Cisco experienced a 20.2 percent growth in revenue, although they do not even show up in the corresponding top five list in shipment numbers.  

Inspur Electronics and Huawei saw the biggest increases on global shipments of server hardware with 53.3 and 27 percent respectively.

Regionally Asia/Pacific led in server shipments with 20.1 percent, followed by North America (8.5 percent) and Western Europe (4.3 percent).

Gartner's report indicates that Facebook, Microsoft and Google are having a significant impact on server shipments:

"The real growth driver for the quarter in terms of absolute value was the Other Vendors category," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. "This collection of unspecified vendors that includes original design manufacturers (ODMs), like Quanta and Wistron, contributed over $750 million in revenue and over 170,000 server unit shipments for the period. This demonstrates that the growth of hyperscale data centers, like those of Facebook, Google and Microsoft, continues to be the leading contributor to physical server increases globally."

Remember - what we know as being in the cloud is actually data sitting on a server somewhere in the world - so hardware remains a critical link in the ecosystem.

But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.

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About the Author

Richard Hay

Senior Content Producer, IT Pro Today (Informa Tech)

I served for 29 plus years in the U.S. Navy and retired as a Master Chief Petty Officer in November 2011. My work background in the Navy was telecommunications related so my hobby of computers fit well with what I did for the Navy. I consider myself a tech geek and enjoy most things in that arena.

My first website – AnotherWin95.com – came online in 1995. Back then I used GeoCities Web Hosting for it and WindowsObserver.com is the result of the work I have done on that site since 1995.

In January 2010 my community contributions were recognized by Microsoft when I received my first Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for the Windows Operating System. Since then I have been renewed as a Microsoft MVP each subsequent year since that initial award. I am also a member of the inaugural group of Windows Insider MVPs which began in 2016.

I previously hosted the Observed Tech PODCAST for 10 years and 317 episodes and now host a new podcast called Faith, Tech, and Space. 

I began contributing to Penton Technology websites in January 2015 and in April 2017 I was hired as the Senior Content Producer for Penton Technology which is now Informa Tech. In that role, I contribute to ITPro Today and cover operating systems, enterprise technology, and productivity.

https://twitter.com/winobs

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