Are sales in servers set to decline?

http://www.insurancenetworking.com/news/10362-1.html

There is overwhelming evidence that spending on servers is slowing down significantly across a number of market sectors, in some cases by up to a factor of five, according to research conducted by TechNavio from Infiniti Research.

Using TechNavio—a research solution that addresses the spectrum of intelligence needs of IT industry sales and strategic planning teams—Infiniti has identified the trend as the direct result of virtualization deployment and the drive to greener computing.

While the initial pace will be set by large enterprises, the long-term play in green computing is clearly in the small to mid-sized business sector, which typically is less efficient in that they use lower-end servers, and have not gone through server consolidation on the same scale as their larger peers.

Spending on IT is one of those cyclical things and it’s influenced by the markets. It’s easier to get funding or budget for headcount/servers or IT infrastructure when the company is doing well. When the markets are down, or people aren’t feeling quite as positive (‘the credit crunch’), IT projects that are deemed unnecessary are often put on hold; particularly when all the economists are trying not to say the r word. It’s not a recession, it’s a slow down, it’s a temporary re-alignment of captial. The IT equivalent of a reboot.

Going forward with virtualization we might find that the demand for servers changes, that’s not to say overnight sales of DL360’s stop, it’s simply that the kind of consumers that bought these servers might find two or three DL380’s running VMWare might be a better bet. But there are still cases where for business, regulatory or even office politcs sake, it’s easier to say “That is your server”, and politely “fill your boots”, the days therefore of the physical server are not numbered, simply the way we buy, provision and use them is. I suspect we might even find that the shelf life, the time we actually keep and use the server lessens as we seek to reduce the hardware support contract and have a fast dynamic infrastructure. Remember, in a virtual world, swapping out a server isn’t the thing that it used to be – I don’t need to do driver pack testing for every platform..

One Response to “Are sales in servers set to decline?”

1. Computer Consulting Kit says:

   January 3, 2008 at 05:58

   I think it’s true that there are different trends in spending, and that a decline in the sale of servers just reflects a specific time in the market rather than a permanent problem. I think it’s definitely the responsibility of IT consultants in every sized business to advise their clients about the importance of having real servers in their businesses to protect data and make life more efficient. I know this can be a point of resistance in some small businesses in particular, but is really the only smart way to guarantee protection of assets.

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