White Box Servers Struggle for Toehold

Even the big name server vendors struggle against commoditization in the server market. As for actual white box server vendors, their life is even tougher. Drew Robb reports.

There is not a lot of room for white box servers in the market these days. According to IDC, five companies — HP, IBM, Dell, Oracle and Fujitsu –- account for 90 percent of total server sales. That remaining 10 percent accommodates a multitude of server vendors including Lenovo, Apple, Appro, Penguin, Supermicro, Intel, Cisco, NEC, Stratus, Bull, Verari and others.

That doesn’t leave much room for white box vendors in terms of revenue.

On unit sales, however, white box vendors fare slightly better. IDC estimates that the white box market has shipped approximately 140,000 to 150,000 units worldwide on a quarterly basis for the past year. This represents between 7 percent and 8 percent of total server shipments worldwide.

“This percentage is down slightly from a historical average of approximately 10 percent,” said Jed Scaramella, an analyst at IDC. “This was a result of more market consolidation and an increased competitive environment during the downturn; as the tier-one OEMs’ server business was impacted, they sought new channels with competitive pricing.”

Read the rest at ServerWatch.