Server market on road to recovery

Peter Dinham
Sunday, 06 December 2009 13:08

IT Industry - Market

The global financial crisis has taken its toll on the world’s IT market, but in the European, Middle East and African and regions there’s already encouraging signs of recovery in server sales, with EMEA vendor revenues for the third quarter of 2009 growing again for the first time since last year.

According to IDC's EMEA quarterly server tracker, EMEA server revenue in 3Q09 reached $2.9 billion, a decline of 25.7 percent year on year, with nearly half a million units shipped, 24.6 percent less than in the same quarter of 2008 – however, sequentially, revenue and units experienced growth of 1.9 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively, with “both measures exhibiting encouraging signs that the worst may be over in what has been the toughest server market environment since IDC records began.”

IDC says the third quarter this year is the first time the EMEA server market posted sequential revenue growth since 4Q08.

IDC’s director of IDC European Systems and Infrastructure Solutions, Nathaniel Martinez, said that overall, the EMEA server market environment remains challenging “despite better than expected performance in the larger countries such as the U.K., Germany, Spain, and to a lesser extent Russia.

"Platform migrations, consolidation projects and datacenter rejuvenation investments are bringing some activity to the market place,” according to Martinez, while IDC colleague, Beatriz Valle, says that enterprise customers have slowly re-initiated server refreshments, “either because of specific vendor roadmaps or simply to boost the flexibility and efficiency of the IT infrastructure, to increase their competitive edge in a toughening environment.”

Vale said that the recent technology developments in x86 microprocessors “helped drive demand in 3Q09, and 2010 will be a promising year in that area."

By subregion, IDC reports that the Middle East and Africa (MEA) reached a double-digit revenue market share for the third consecutive quarter, with 11.7 percent of total revenue, while Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), slightly recovered quarter on quarter, but continued to have a lower market share than in 2008, with 10 percent of the total revenue.

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