Dell EMC leads global server revenue boom

The EMEA region didn't perform as well as the global landscape though

Gartner's latest server report has revealed global server revenues increased by 25.7% in the fourth quarter of 2017, resulting in total increases of 3.1% over the whole year. In EMEA, revenues grew by 19.9%, while shipments decreased by 7.9%.

Dell EMC led the worldwide league tables with 19.4% of the revenues in the fourth quarter, followed by HPE at 19.3% and third-place IBM with 14.1% of the worldwide market share. Little-known Inspur Electronics came in at fourth, with a huge 127% year-on-year growth. However, IBM and Dell EMC also achieved impressive year-on-year growth at 51.4% and 39.9% respectively.

"Server growth was driven by relatively strong economies for the quarter across the globe," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. "This was a somewhat surprising quarter because the strength was exhibited in a variety of positive server shipment and revenue mixes in almost all geographies."

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The impressive results from the fourth quarter of 2017 allowed the entire year's results to finish on a positive note, with shipments increasing by 3.1% compared to 2016 and revenues, up by 10.4%. Gartner explained the reason for such a positive outlook was because both businesses and hyperscale data centres decided to make the jump to digital solutions.

"The outlook for 2018 suggests that modest growth will continue, with enterprise end users taking an ongoing hybrid approach to both on-premises and public cloud choices based on their server application objectives," Hewitt added.

In the EMEA region, HPE's server shipments were down 21.5%, Dell EMC 10.2%, Lenovo 12.6%, and Huawei 6.6%. The biggest winners for revenues were IBM with 67.4% growth year-on-year and Dell EMC with increases of 43.5%. HPE remained in pole position.

"At first glance, the EMEA server market ended 2017 positively," Gartner research director, Adrian O'Connell said. "The main driver for the revenue growth, however, remains the increasing cost of certain components due to supply shortages, with vendors passing that cost increase on to users."

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Clare is the founder of Blue Cactus Digital, a digital marketing company that helps ethical and sustainability-focused businesses grow their customer base.

Prior to becoming a marketer, Clare was a journalist, working at a range of mobile device-focused outlets including Know Your Mobile before moving into freelance life.

As a freelance writer, she drew on her expertise in mobility to write features and guides for ITPro, as well as regularly writing news stories on a wide range of topics.