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IBM leads server race, Cisco breaks top 5

The most notable server battle was in the No. 4 position. Oracle's market share slide continued and Cisco edged into a statistical tie. IDC noted that this quarter was the first time Cisco broke into the top 5.
Written by Larry Dignan, Contributor

The server race—especially a dogfight for the No. 4 position between Oracle, Cisco and Fujitsu—is getting interesting.

According to IDC, IBM was the No. 1 server vendor in the fourth quarter with 36.5 percent market share. IBM got a big boost from System z mainframes. HP was No. 2 with 24.8 percent market share as its high-end Itanium system sales continued to fall. Dell had 15.1 percent of the market in the fourth quarter.

But the most notable battle was in the No. 4 position. Oracle's market share slide continued and Cisco edged into a statistical tie. IDC noted that this quarter was the first time Cisco broke into the top 5. Overall, global server revenue for the fourth quarter was $14.6 billion, up 3.1 percent from a year ago.

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And for all of 2012.

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Another notable item from IDC was the vendor scorecard in developed and emerging markets. IBM is strong in emerging markets as is HP, but Fujitsu is a no-show and Cisco is weaker than it is in developed economies.

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Other odds and ends:

  • Linux server demand was strong as revenue jumped 12.7 percent in the fourth quarter to $3 billion. Linux servers have 20.4 percent market share.
  • Windows server revenue was up 3.2 percent in the fourth quarter to $6.7 billion. That sum was good for 45.8 percent market share.
  • Unix servers saw revenue fall 24.1 percent in the fourth quarter to $2.6 billion. Unix has 17.6 percent of the market.
  • IBM's System z platform saw revenue jump 55.6 percent in the fourth quarter to $1.8 billion, or 12.3 percent of market share.
  • Blade servers account for 16.3 percent of server revenue in the fourth quarter. HP has a dominant blade market share at 44.7 percent, followed by IBM at 21.7 percent and Cisco at 15.3 percent.
  • Dell had 50.8 percent market share for density optimized servers, which are used by large data centers. Revenue for density optimized servers was up 66.4 percent in the fourth quarter.
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