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WOW! BOOM! The Brit server market is back ... in a way, sort of

'Some general market strength, not enough to excite people'

Brit businesses and local public sector organs are spending on servers again, but it's Dell and Cisco who are mopping up most of this organic goodness.

Gartner’s numbers for Q1 are out: shipments grew a little over five per cent year-on-year to around 80k units, and the value of those boxes climbed ten per cent to $549m.

This is a “fairly robust” showing, said research director Adrian O’Connell, “there was some general market strength, not necessarily anything to get too excited about”.

He told us the recession of yesteryear altered the dynamics of the market and there’s been “no concerted spending increase since and no particular impetus to notch that up a level”.

Industry pals at some heavy-hitting resellers reckon a Windows Server 2003 refresh helped to beef up the sales figures.

O’Connell said the Q1 rise came despite server markers upping prices on several occasions over recent months to “balance costs” following the appreciation of the dollar versus the pound.

This “poses a challenge” as the year progresses because customers’ budgets will likely be stretched, the Gartner man said.

HP continued to lead the UK server stakes with revenue growth of four per cent translating into market share of 35 per cent. Dell kept hold of second place after reporting revenue growth of 55 per cent, giving it a 21 per cent share of spoils.

The quarter tends to be a strong one for Dell, given its standing in the public sector, which tends to flush through end-of-year budgets in the period.

Oracle declined one per cent, with IBM was down a hefty 50 per cent following the sale of its System x division to Lenovo, Cisco bounced 44 per cent to over ten per cent.

Lenovo snuck into sixth place, grabbing market share of 4.2 per cent. ®

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