Server-side story

Looking at the global server market numbers for 2007 some things are clear. After years of being proclaimed as the coming technology, server blades have finally arrived. Q4 2007 saw revenues from this category grow by 54% while shipments were up by 36%. This at a time when revenues from high-end and mid-range servers fell year on year as per IDC. According to WinterGreen Research the worldwide total blade server market will stand at $5.2 billion in 2008 and it is forecast to reach $15.7 billion dollars by 2013. The blade server market in India is reported to be growing faster than the global one and has already topped a lakh units per year.

In terms of OS figures, Windows Server dominated with a 37% market share though Linux grew faster at 12% than Windows Server at 7%. Both OSs posted their best ever numbers. In the backdrop of the recent launch of Windows Server 2008, Unix is going to be under pressure to maintain even the nearly flat growth it had in 2007.

The buzz is strong around virtualization with everybody from the processor makers to the OS vendors having an offering in this area. This year will see the standalone players being challenged by the server OS vendors and depending upon who wins, that will define the course of the Server OS market. VMware leads here but it faces a strong challenge from Microsoft later this year once the latter’s Hyper-V software is out.

64-bit x86 gear is the category to watch this year. With software vendors writing code for the x86 platform focusing on 64-bit and multi-core processors having been out long enough for developers to get the hang of writing for them, the long-awaited transition to 64-bit on the volume server platform will begin.

While there are fears that the global server market will be affected by the slowdown in the US economy, the Indian server market shouldn’t be overly impacted by this. Gartner’s global CIO survey found that the average IT spend by Indian firms is expected to go up by 13% this year vis-a-vis a global average of 3.3%. As per AMI, Indian SMBs are going to spend $9.7 billion on IT this year, up 22% over 2007. Things are looking up for the server market this year and the growth will be driven by blades, Windows Server 2008 and Linux, virtualization and the health of the economy.

prashant.rao@expressindia.com