Bladewatch.com

IDC

London, 4 December, 2009 – According to IDC’s EMEA Quarterly Server Tracker, EMEA server revenue in 3Q09 reached $2.9 billion, a decline of 25.7% year on year, with nearly half a million units shipped, 24.6% less than in the same quarter of 2008. Sequentially, revenue and units experienced growth of 1.9% and 8.4%, respectively, both measures exhibiting encouraging signs that the worst may be over in what has been the toughest server market environment since IDC records began. This quarter was the first time the EMEA server market posted sequential revenue growth since 4Q08.

 By subregion, the Middle East and Africa (MEA) reached a double-digit revenue market share for the third consecutive quarter, with 11.7% of total revenue, while Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), slightly recovered quarter on quarter, but continued to have a lower market share than in 2008, with 10% of the total revenue. The figures confirm that market demand is growing in the Middle East and Africa while Central and Eastern Europe is taking longer to recover. Western European revenue accounted for 78.3% of the total EMEA sales.

Market momentum for x86 servers continued unabated, with revenue performance better than non-x86 servers. x86 revenue was down 21.3% annually and up 16.7% sequentially, with units up 9.6%. x86 revenue reached $1.7 billion, while non-x86 sales totaled $1.2 billion. Non-x86 revenue was down both annually and sequentially. Year on year, non-x86 revenue was down by 31.3%, while sequentially revenue was down by 14%. Shipments slumped, decreasing 49.5% in 3Q09 on 3Q08, confirming that non-x86 ASVs remain the highest in the market by a big margin. In terms of units, only 2.7% of all the servers shipped in EMEA were non-x86.

By server class, volume servers were again the main market engine with $1.7 billion, or 59.1% of the total EMEA revenue. Midrange servers, the majority of which belong to the RISC segment, suffered the sharpest decline of all sub-segments in 3Q09, 34.6% down annually, with less than $400 million in sales. High-end servers also declined by 30.2% year on year after surpassing $800 million in EMEA in 3Q09.

 ”Overall, the EMEA server market environment remains challenging despite better than expected performance in the larger countries such as the U.K., Germany, Spain, and to a lesser extent Russia,” said Nathaniel Martinez, director of IDC European Systems and Infrastructure Solutions. “Platform migrations, consolidation projects and datacenter rejuvenation investments are bringing some activity to the market place.

 ”Enterprise customers have slowly re-initiated server refreshments, either because of specific vendor roadmaps or simply to boost the flexibility and efficiency of the IT infrastructure, to increase their competitive edge in a toughening environment. The recent technology developments in x86 microprocessors helped drive demand in 3Q09, and 2010 will be a promising year in that area,” said Beatriz Valle, IDC analyst for European Systems and Infrastructures Solutions. “The sequential quarterly revenue growth is very subdued, but server vendors remain hopeful that things will pick up in the fourth quarter, which is traditionally strong in the corporate space due to end-of-year budget renewals. Fourth-quarter performance will be critical to measure where the market is heading in the medium term.”

Blade Market Dynamics

“The blade segment has been less impacted by the current market woes, as progress in blade technologies accelerates innovation in both the x86 and the non-x86 business segments,” said Giorgio Nebuloni, senior research analyst with IDC European Systems and Infrastructure Solutions. “Blades represented 16% of the x86 units, down from 16.3% in 2Q09, but thanks to their growing ASVs blade revenue was down only 6% year on year. IDC expects this product segment to see positive growth already in 4Q09, as new, integrated technology offerings relying on the blade platform see a good uptake. In this respect, non-x86 blades ($40.5 million in revenue in 3Q09, up 6% year on year) will become increasingly crucial, bringing Unix environments onto blade architectures.”

CEMA Highlights

“In the CEMA region, revenue was down 35.3% on the year and up 8.3% on the quarter, with units down 35.7% annually and up 18% quarterly. The x86 market was the engine behind quarterly growth, with 59.3% of total revenue and 97.5% of total shipments in 3Q09. But demand for industry standard servers varies by subregion, with 44.2% of total revenue in MEA belonging to the non-x86 market, while just 36.6% of total sales in CEE were related to the non-x86 business,” said IDC CEMA Systems Research Director Stefania Lorenz.

Market Highlights

• x86 server revenue was down 21.4% year on year and up 16.7% quarter on quarter. Revenue for industry standard servers reached $1.7 billion or 59.2% of the EMEA total in 3Q09. Despite sharp annual declines of 25%, EPIC servers experienced a resurgence quarter on quarter, up by a strong 19.7% to $300 million, and nearly on a par with CISC revenue now. RISC and CISC revenue were down both year on year and quarter on quarter. The RISC market share in EMEA declined by nearly five percentage points year on year.
• Of all the main operating systems, Unix recorded the sharpest annual decline, with revenue down 36.3% in 3Q09 on 3Q08. Windows and Linux recorded annual declines of 22.7% and 18%, respectively, with IBM’s mainframe operating system holding up relatively well, down 19.3% year on year.
• Windows maintained its revenue leading spot, with 43.6% of all the EMEA revenue, with Unix lagging well behind, at 25.9% of EMEA revenue, followed by Linux, with 16.9%. This means there is now a revenue differential of 16 full percentage points between the two main operating systems, the biggest ever recorded by IDC. Although Windows has been bidding for the top spot for years now, in 4Q08 both operating systems were still neck and neck, with 35% of the total market each.
• Blades continue to display extraordinarily robust performance when compared to other form factors. Annual revenue declines were just 5.2%, compared with the strong declines of 27.7% and 30.7% for pedestals and racks respectively. Quarter on quarter, blade revenue was up 17.4%, to nearly half a billion dollars. Blade revenue is now 15.8% of the total in EMEA, two full percentage points above the previous quarter and the highest it has ever been. The last time the blade market share decreased was in 3Q06.
• Regarding server class, volume server revenue reached $1.7 billion, down 23% year on year and up 12.3% quarter on quarter. Volume servers were 59.1% of the total revenue, with midrange server revenue just 12.9%. The vast majority of x86 servers were volume servers, with $1.6 billion in sales. High-end server revenue spread across the RISC, CISC, and EPIC segment, but the majority of midrange server revenue originated in the RISC segment.

 Vendor Highlights

•  HP held the top revenue spot in EMEA for the seventh consecutive quarter in 3Q09, with over 40% of the market share thanks to the strong overall market demand of x86 technologies, which account for nearly 75% of the vendor’s sales. The industry-standard Proliant family was up 24.8% quarter on quarter, but down 16.9% year on year, with nearly $900 million. Integrity servers, based on Intel’s Itanium processor, were up 19.3% quarter on quarter, nearing $300 million in revenue.
• IBM managed to narrow the gap against HP by around two percentage points on the same quarter last year. The RISC-based Power Systems continued as the top revenue-generating server product for the company with well over $300 million, and the x86 family System x did very well, up 34.2% quarter on quarter and with 35.1% of the revenue, thanks to good performance in both blades and rack systems. Mainframes experienced both annual and quarterly declines.
• Helped by demand in x86, Dell was the only vendor to slightly increase its revenue market share year on year, albeit by a very small margin of 0.3%. The PowerEdge line reached nearly $300 million in revenue.
• Sun saw its market share decrease by more than two percentage points in 3Q09 over 3Q08, with its performance affected by the delays in the transactions over its sale to Oracle. Its RISC-based SPARC Enterprise family generated nearly 70% of the vendor’s revenue, and its Sun x86 line more than 20% of Sun’s revenue for the quarter.
• Fujitsu continued its push in the x86 arena, with sales of Primergy reaching in excess of $100 million and growing 7.9% quarter on quarter, despite an annual decline of 33.8%. Sales of its BS2000 mainframes neared $70 million and were up 15.8% quarter on quarter.

Top 5 Vendors, EMEA Server Factory Revenue, Third Quarter of 2009, Revenue in Millions

Source: IDC’s EMEA Quarterly Server Tracker, December 2009

IDC’s EMEA Quarterly Server Tracker is a quantitative tool for analyzing the server market on a quarterly basis. The tracker includes quarterly shipments (both ISS and upgrades) and revenues (both customer and factory), segmented by vendor, family, model, region, country, operating system, price band, CPU type, and architecture.

An interesting article talking about server sales, I think we’ll see shipments increase whether it’s refreshing the server estate to reduce the energy and support costs, or through new investments and projects. Interestingly I wonder how much of this demand will be driven by integration and dis-integration projects with all the mergers and acquisitions that have been happening over the last year or so.

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Cisco

Cisco Rack Server firmware: (UCS C250 to follow, once it does I will add a Cisco firmware spreadsheet to the site)

UCS CS200 M1

• Integrated Management Controller firmware – 1.0(1e)
• RAID Controller firmware – 1.0(1e)
• System Bios – 1.03

UCS CS210 M1

• Integrated Management Controller firmware – 1.0(1e)
• RAID Controller firmware – 1.0(1e)
• System Bios – 1.0.3

The tools and drivers bundle is version 1.0(1k)

The software container for rack mount servers is 1.0(1e)

Cisco Blade Server firmware:

Cisco UCS B200 M1 blade server

• Baseboard Management Controller firmware – 1.0(2d)
• RAID Controller firmware – 01.28_06.28_03.12
• System Bios – 1.1.36

Cisco UCS B250 M1 Extended Memory blade server

• Baseboard Management Controller firmware – 1.0(2d)
• RAID Controller firmware – 01.28_06.28_03.12
• System Bios – 01.00.81

The tools and drivers bundle is 1.0(2d)

The complete software bundle is 1.0(2d)

As with any server vendor/technical device, do check that you are running the latest supported firmware and software/drivers before logging a call. You will need to register to download the updates.

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Blade.org

Blade.Org is gathering the experts on network convergence to discuss the emergence of faster 10Gb Ethernet technology which incorporates storage protocols such as FCOE and iSCSI in addition to NIC functionality. Building upon the previous webinar topic of server virtualization, this session will address how this technology can be deployed in the blade environment, saving power, time, and cost. I/O virtualization is another potential solution to reduce I/O bottlenecks and speed the migration towards converged networks.

Check out this webinar on blade.org which is talking about 10GB Ethernet technology, something I’ve been talking to colleagues about, if you’re interested, make sure you register.

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I have updated the IBM Firmware Spreadsheet and PDF. These are two documents just listing a selection of IBM servers and the relevant firmware for those servers. Apologies if your server is not listed, the reason for this is simply it takes me quite a while to check it all, put it all together and to decide which systems are in scope. Next month, I’ll refresh the Rack servers we list and increase it to provide more coverage. If you have any questions/comments get in touch.

A few points/highlights, I have added more blade servers to the spreadsheet. There are some important changes around the bios on servers in relation to the IBM Advanced Settings Utility, so do check it out to see if your servers are in scope.

I do the firmware spreadsheets for Dell/HP/IBM (at the moment) to remind our end user community to keep the firmware up to date (and the driver packs) as these are the typical things that the vendor will ask when logging a call.

IBM publish their expectations wonderfully at this url, so do check it out before logging a call.

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I was downloading some drivers from the IBM support site and doing some research when I noticed that IBM have a new ‘IBM Support Portal‘, do check it out, it’s very cool.

I like what they have done it makes accessing the information a bit easier, well done to them, do check it out and give them your feedback. It’s great to see IBM continue to improve their support site for their end user community, well done.

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http://www.bladewatch.com/2009/09/29/hp-proliant-support-pack-8-30/ and http://www.bladewatch.com/2009/11/25/hp-ilo2-firmwa…update-to-1-80/

I upgraded the Bladewatch DL360 G5 today with the new Proliant Support Pack 8.30 (I wanted to see what was different and play with the HP Lights Out Configuration Utility. This allows you to configure the ILO (their version of a lights out management interface) without rebooting the server or using their command configuration utilities such as HPoncfg which I’ve written about or the Command Line Interface option. Anyway, it’s cool, I like it and the screen shot is below, I like how it tells you the ILO firmware version so you know instantly if you need to upgrade it.

ILO configuration Utility

The options along the top allow for the configuration of the network settings, user configuration and settings.

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rPath

RALEIGH, N.C. — November 30, 2009 — rPath, an innovator in automating application deployment and maintenance, today announced enterprise-focused productivity and management enhancements to the rPath release automation platform. The upgrades refine the functionality and user experience of the industry’s first fully version controlled release automation solution, meeting the needs of each stakeholder in the enterprise release management process. These upgrades are the first product delivery against “Project Javelin,” which extends rPath’s unique system version controlled management model into the broader data center automation market.

In related news, rPath today announced a management solution for Red Hat Enterprise Linux; see “rPath Expands Operating System Coverage with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5.”

“For enterprise IT, system complexity is emerging as the greatest threat to cost, compliance and service level agreements,” said Jake Sorofman, vice president of marketing for rPath. “At the center of the complexity challenge is the release management process—the tasks associated with creating, provisioning and maintaining software systems. With this latest rPath version, we’re arming IT organizations with the tools to easily standardize, automate, control and audit their release management processes, reducing delay, operating expenses and compliance risks.”

Anything we can do to improve application deployment and management has to be a good thing for the end user and the business. By automating the deployment and roll outs, we can empower application teams to manage their deployments, IT can focus more on maintaining production, and allow our teams to ensure that we have standardized configurations and deployments. To avoid those errors because a script hasn’t been run on one node in the right way, during the deployment process which can so easily be the difference between a working application and not. I’m off to read up more, and do check out the webinar next week.

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HP

PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 30, 2009 – HP today announced new integrations of the recently introduced HP Converged Infrastructure architecture for Microsoft applications, enabling customers to simplify the management of their computing environments while increasing efficiency.

The proliferation of IT sprawl has created technology silos in data centers with maintenance and operations consuming approximately 70 percent of an organization’s technology budget.⁽¹⁾

HP and Microsoft collaborated to help customers address this problem by delivering HP solutions for Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 and Windows® Server 2008 R2. These solutions simplify the data center environment and reduce costs by increasing infrastructure utilization, reducing power use and gaining efficiencies in application deployment and management.

With new HP BladeSystem Matrix templates, HP reference architectures and HP Services for Microsoft environments, customers can maximize the value of Microsoft applications by establishing a converged server, storage and network technology that is highly efficient, automated and virtualized.

“Customers are looking for solutions to transform unmanageable infrastructures so they can better address changing business demands,” said Paul Miller, vice president, marketing, Enterprise Storage, Servers and Networking, HP. “HP’s Converged Infrastructure provides a blueprint for unifying servers, storage, networks, power and cooling with facilities into a single environment, optimized for both physical and virtual workloads and perfectly suited for Microsoft applications.”

Continuing to extend the offerings of the Matrix concept brings further opportunities to the HP platform in terms of convergence and in reducing deployment times. The more barriers to success we can remove in terms of deployment and in doing so delivery, the more we can illustrate IT as an enabler to the business goals, create new opportunities for revenue and business improvement.

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IBM

ARMONK, N.Y. – 30 Nov 2009: IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that it again held the lead as the top server vendor worldwide in 3Q09 with 31.7 percent revenue share — compared with 30.2 percent for its nearest competitor — according to a new Gartner report. The IBM gains were fueled by advances in Intel-based servers and UNIX systems.

IBM gained 1.2 points in revenue share year-to-year according to Gartner. This marks the sixth consecutive quarter that IBM has led in Gartner’s report on worldwide server revenue.

For the third quarter of 2009, Gartner reported the following:

IBM continued its momentum in Intel-based servers, with System x gaining 2.2 points of revenue share in 3Q09 year-to-year, the third consecutive quarter of sustained revenue share growth. IBM blades gained 4.9 points of revenue share year-to-year.

For UNIX servers, IBM added 4.2 points of revenue share year-to-year and held the lead, at 38.4 percent, for the fifth consecutive quarter. This was 10.2 percent higher than the second-place vendor in 3Q09.

As it has since 2002, IBM held the No. 1 position for servers priced above $250,000, with 56.4 percent revenue share in 3Q09.

Well done to IBM, it’s interesting to note that demand for high performance and high end systems continues, that the competition between the vendors continues is good for end users and the industry alike.

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