Hybrid cloud fuels spike in server spending, says Gartner

The growing popularity of hybrid cloud and higher costs for components are responsible for a substantial jump in global server sales in the third quarter of 2017, according to Gartner.

Revenues from x86 servers went up by 17% worldwide, to a total of $14.7 billion, while overall server shipment numbers saw a 5% increase. HPE held the top spot in terms of total revenues for the quarter, at $3.2 billion, while Dell EMC racked up 502,845 shipments - the largest number - thanks to its extensive product portfolio.

"A build-out of infrastructure to support cloud and hybrid cloud implementations was the main driver for growth in the server market for the period," said Gartner research vice president Jeffrey Hewitt.

451 Research is of the same opinion, predicting that by 2019, two-thirds of enterprises will be using multi-cloud solutions. In fact, in a recent 451 survey, 90% of organisations said that they use some kind of cloud service.

The EMEA region also saw a revenue increase of 17% with a 3% growth in shipments. However, Gartner noted that this wasn't entirely down to an increase in investment from organisations.

"On the surface, the EMEA server market has some positive results at last," said Adrian O'Connell, research director at Gartner. "However, the increased price of certain components due to supply shortages was the main driver of the revenue growth, as vendors passed increased costs on to users."

"Despite revenues in the third quarter looking relatively positive, the low shipment growth shows the EMEA server market remains constrained," he said. "While component shortages will ease, we're not expecting to see an improvement in the underlying business outlook across the region for some time."

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