Gartner confirms crap Q2 server sales

Re: Do the math Matty!

Using the Risc/Itanic figues from Gartner....

Total 57789 100.00%

HP 8358 14.46%

IBM 16635 28.79%

Sun 30997 53.64%

More customers have confidence in Sun/Sparc than any other Risc architecture. Perhaps Larry is on the money when he says Oracle will continue with Sparc.

More like SUN is cheaper??

So HP sells 8,358 boxes at $713.7m so circa $84k average sale price per server

SUN sells 30,977 boxes at $850.3m so circa $26k average sale price per server

So looks to me like SUN is owning the low end, with HP selling more into the mid-range and high end?? Nothing new here SUN has always owned the lower end of the UNIX market particularly in EMEA.

Possibly the big hits that SUN have had (down 47.2%) are in the high end where they have been hit by the demise of ROCK as their low end looks to be fairly strong based on shipments

I don't think its anything to do with confidence just same old buying patterns

SUN = lots of lower cost boxes serving the low to mid tier

HP & IBM = fewer higher cost boxes serving the mid- higher end

I would think that due to the average sale price that HP's retained margins will be better than SUN's but who knows

But hell its just statistics!

I would be quite so triumphant here as both companies are doing toilet,

everyone ragging on Matt

As I said I don't have much skin in the game I just want HP finally to admit what an epic fail the whole itanium fiasco was (Intel did long ago, thus the delays actually modernizing it). The chip really did a great job of getting people to cheer against it. I guess it is because that POS chip was supposed to replace the greatest chip ever made (against its peers of the time), the Alpha line. That said even if people are competitors lets not cheer too much for anyone to fail right now. The Unix market doesn't need to keep shrinking and most of all IT budgets really really need to quit shrinking.

re:asdf

I don't think Alpha is all it was cracked up to be, for example I've worked with customers who had OpenVMS on Alpha and have now moved to Itanium and they are really pleased with it, mostly because it completely kicks the ar5e end out of their old Alpha boxes (Which were EV7's so no slouches) on performance as well as delivering the same level of reliability at a much reduced cost.

Having worked in this area for some time now the Itanium chip isn't all that bad, its not got the raw grunt of Power or the market penetration of Sparc, but its still a decent reliable chip that does a pretty good job and importantly gives customers a choice to keep the market honest and interesting. I think the biggest issue Itanium has is that the 1st gen chips were a POS! The current ones aren't too bad though.

Re: Adam61

I agree. Really HP should have rebranded the chips after the first generation was such a disaster. Instead the public smelled the cover up of not admitting a mistake and are slow to accept it on its current merits. Still even now if the crew that made the Alpha would have had the money HP and Intel sunk into Itanium, Intel may not own the server market. Alphas may seem slow now but have to compare them to their peers of the time such as the 200mhz pentium pro and their was no competition performance wise (pricewise also but that is why DEC is only remember by those over 35 these days).