Cisco Now a Top 5 Server Vendor

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In its report on the server market for the fourth quarter of 2012, IDC found that Cisco has become one of the top five server vendors for the first time ever. IBM remained number one. Overall, server sales climbed for the first time in more than a year.

Computerword’s James Niccolai reported, “Cisco Systems has entered the list of the top 5 server vendors for the first time, drawing level with Fujitsu and Oracle in a tie for fourth place, research firm IDC said on Wednesday. It’s a symbolic victory for Cisco that comes four years after the networking vendor entered the server market with its Unified Computing System, combining compute, network and virtualization resources in a single box.”

Jeffrey Burt from eWeek added, “Meanwhile, Gartner said Feb. 27 that Cisco placed fifth in server shipments for the quarter, and was the only vendor in the top five to see a growth in shipments, with a 40.9 percent jump over the same quarter in 2011.”

ZDNet’s Larry Dignan added, “According to IDC, IBM was the No. 1 server vendor in the fourth quarter with 36.5 percent market share. IBM got a big boost from System z mainframes. HP was No. 2 with 24.8 percent market share as its high-end Itanium system sales continued to fall. Dell had 15.1 percent of the market in the fourth quarter. But the most notable battle was in the No. 4 position. Oracle’s market share slide continued and Cisco edged into a statistical tie.”

MarketWatch’s Benjamin Pimentel wrote, “Worldwide server revenue edged higher in the fourth quarter of 2012, the first year-over-year increase in five quarters, according to an IDC report released late Wednesday. Server sales totaled $14.6 billion, up 3% from the year-earlier period. However, despite the growth, IDC analyst Matt Eastwood said ‘the server market continued to show signs of lumpiness in the fourth quarter.'”