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Market Momentum, Market Share, and FUD
The server business is a competitive business. Every vendor tries to show momentum. Why? Platforms with momentum tend to attract skilled people, more ISVs, and support. This means more options for customers and often more stability. This of course tends to lead to more market share.
Now, each vendor will tend to publish the numbers that benefit their story the most - not that the server business is in any way unique in this regard. Every vendor gets customers to migrate to their platforms every quarter. So, how do you keep track?
At HP, like many other IT companies, we tend to use the IDC numbers to keep score. Overall, HP has lead the server business in revenue for 3 consecutive quarters - the first time we've done this in the history of the IDC Server Tracker. If you are interested in seeing a few more market share facts, feel free to take a look at the recent article on HP's Real Story website.
So, what do you think about market share numbers? Do they impact your purchase decisions in any way? Do you buy from the big vendor or the little vendor?
And now that the Q3 numbers are out, I need to go back and update my internal score card.
Jacob Van Ewyk
Superdome 10th Anniversary Kick Off - Part 2
We finished a fabulous Superdome Tech Day yesterday with a number of bloggers. I need to go and see what they have written, but I know that at least one site actually covered the event live. There were also a lot of tweets using the tag #HPSuperdome.
There were a couple of questions, thoughts, and interesting things that struck me.
- OpenVMS is on HP Integrity servers. A few of the bloggers thought that OpenVMS was dead, and they were glad to hear that it is still alive, well, and being developed.
- HP Non-Stop servers are also Integrity servers, using the HP Itanium processor. They aren't Superdomes, but this was also something that a lot of people we not aware of in the room.
- I had a great chat with Jean Bozman from IDC after her presentation. It was interesting to note that the UNIX server business has consistantly been 31-32% of the overall server market revenue since they started counting the market in 1996 up until 2008. The overall market goes up and down, and the UNIX business with it. However, this explains to many people why UNIX servers will be around for a long time. The Windows and Linux on x86 markets have definitely grown, but it was mostly at the expense of "Other Servers" while the UNIX business has remained steady.
- We had a chance to look at a Superdome. Not just a new Superdome, but an original pre-production Superdome delivered months before the product was announced. It doesn't have any of the skins on it, but has been upgraded over the years with all the new components. It's still used for performance work today, almost 10 years after it was first installed.
- We finished the day with a quiz on the benefits of moving from an IBM mainframe to an HP Superdome. The questions were based on facts that come up during things like the Mainframe TCO challenge . We had a lot of fun with that, but some of the TCO savings by moving to a HP Superdome just blew people away.
Are there any of these topics that you want to hear more about? Leave me a comment, and I'll see if I can address them in more detail in a future blog post.
