News

Microsoft Servers Show 2Q Growth Thanks to x86 Demand

• By Chris Paoli
• August 27, 2010

Windows Server sales rode high as the worldwide midrange server market showed an 11 percent revenue increase in the second quarter, compared with last year's numbers, according to IDC.

"The uptick in the midrange server market shows there was pent-up demand for more scalable servers, through replacement for aging servers and workload consolidation," said Jean S. Bozman, research vice president for enterprise servers at IDC.

Unit shipments with Microsoft Windows Server increased 28.2 percent in the second quarter and server hardware revenue showed a gain of 36.6 percent over 2009's second-quarter revenue result. The increase in Windows Server shipments helped to bring home $5 billion in quarterly revenue for Microsoft and gave the company a 46.5 percent stake in the overall market.

Microsoft's results were due, in part, to enterprise spending on the growing x86 server market, according to IDC's analysis.

"Within the x86 server market, enterprise spending has had a strong return through server refreshes," said Reuben Miller, senior analyst for enterprise servers at IDC. "As the economy begins to show signs of recovery, large enterprise businesses are gaining a better view of spending capabilities for the remainder of the fiscal year and beginning to increase their investments."

Linux joined Microsoft in capitalizing on the growing x86 server demand. However, Unix servers suffered a 7.2 percent decline in server revenue. Other non-x86 servers, including those based on RISC, CISC and EPIC, were dealt a 16 percent decrease in the second quarter.