IBM leads server race, Cisco breaks top 5

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.

And for all of 2012.

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.

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.