Disk shortages stall Q4 server sales (a bit) Considering the challenges that the server biz has faced in recent months, global server shipments have remained relatively healthy, with revenues impacted mostly by declining IBM mainframe sales. Server shipments in the final quarter of 2011 were adversely impacted by the disk drive shortages from the flooding in Thailand, …
> Yes, on what planet is Dell "tier one" at anything.
The one where cheap PC kit outperforms proprietary RISC and clustered solutions are the norm. Even old school Unix shops ditch "little iron" for clustered solutions to avoid being reamed on hardware costs.
If you don't do any back office computing you might not notice that Dell does more than sell cheap consumer desktops.
Yes, people are moving off of RISC (and running from IA64 like the plague) to x86.... I don't see what that has to do with Dellapart. HP and IBM are the tier x86 one server providers. Dell has no RAS, zero software value add. I know they sell more than cheap consumer desktops. They sell cheap business servers too.
On RISC vs. x86. Yes, x86 clusters can outperform RISC, calculator processors can outperform RISC if you cluster enough of them. The problem is you have to pay someone to integrate all of that stuff and run around racking, stacking, upgrading, etc the stuff... and that is just at the HW level.
HP is the only company that blamed disk shortages for their server fall off in all categories, which was a rouse. IBM, Cisco, and, at the lowest end, Dell were their problem. As blade servers generally have no disk and even racks have minimal disk relative to arrays, it doesn't seem like a supply chain crimp would cause any major problems. The problem is Intel taking their sweet time releasing Sandy Bridge.
Hmmmm. I think the article mentioned that hp had 44% of the blades market to IBM's 21%, so it would seem the disk issue didn't stop their customers choosing the hp blades over IBM's.
".....As blade servers generally have no disk...." We have plenty of hp blades and they have hot-swap disks (some do have SSDs instead) as part of our standard builds, even if they are SAN booting. Could it be your experience is limited to a certain manufacturer which doesn't do hot-swap disks on their blades very well?
Generally.... I didn't say never. Servers have disk in them, but it didn't see to cause IBM, Cisco or even Oracle (despite their server numbers crashing) to mention it as the reason servers were down or up. The amount of disk required to keep pumping out servers is pretty minimal as compared to the impact on an EMC or NetApp. HP is going to use every operation excuse under the sun to so avoid saying that people are just buying other gear. It probably isn't IBM that is taking a bite out of them, it is Cisco.
HP has always had a higher blade market share than IBM. Their x86 servers crashed, like every other HP unit, this quarter.
"Servers have disk in them...." Actually, our UNIX iron often doesn't have onboard drives, mostly being SAN-boot, it's the Windows and Linux x86 servers that do.
"....HP is going to use every operation excuse under the sun to so avoid saying that people are just buying other gear...." But hp was still the top x86 shipper, and whilst their figure was down, so was IBM's 3rd place figure, the only real gainer being 2nd place Dell. So. once again, you're just talking male bovine manure.
".....it is Cisco....." ROFLMAO! CISCO taking share from hp - are you kidding? The great decliner in blades (the only x86 that CISCO does) is IBM, hp are still holding 44% of the market, more than double the IBM figure, and IBM once had roughly equal share with hp. CISCO have scraped in at 8%, no doubt taking share from IBM shops, just as hp blades have aslo been doing.
Wunderburp, I suggest you get an adult to explain these articles to you.
"Actually, our UNIX iron often doesn't have onboard drives, mostly being SAN-boot, it's the Windows and Linux x86 servers that do."
You mean your customers Unix servers.
"But hp was still the top x86 shipper, and whilst their figure was down, so was IBM's 3rd place figure, the only real gainer being 2nd place Dell. So. once again, you're just talking male bovine manure."
IN SHIPMENTS, do you get paid in number of boxes shipped? No, it is revenue. IBM is still second in revenue. Their blade market share has held steady at slightly over 20%. IBM is well ahead of Dell in revenue.
"ROFLMAO! CISCO taking share from hp - are you kidding? The great decliner in blades (the only x86 that CISCO does) is IBM, hp are still holding 44% of the market, more than double the IBM figure, and IBM once had roughly equal share with hp. CISCO have scraped in at 8%, no doubt taking share from IBM shops, just as hp blades have aslo been doing."
Look at Cisco's uptick combined with HP's fall-off in the link below. Cisco has bragged about 70% of their takeaways coming from HP, which makes sense based upon the market changes. Cisco is beating on HP.
http://jeffsaidso.com/2011/05/cisco-ucs-market-share-%E2%80%93-q1-2011/
Matt, only you could read HP's disastrous quarter(s) on every front as a somehow being positive. Even the CEO of the company is talking about how they need to transform the entire place!
"....You mean your customers Unix servers....." <Chuckle!> And once again, we have the refelxive IBM troll accusation "you disagree with me so you MUST work for hp!" What a hoot! If you read back through a few old posts, you'll see that I've been accused by pro-Sun posters of working for IBM! Boy, Ginni Rommetty is sure gonna stop my bonus if you tell him! ROFLMAO!
"......Their blade market share has held steady at slightly over 20%...." Hmmmm, just how long has IBM "held steady" then? It wasn't too long ago they were neck-and-neck with hp in the blades market. Indeed, this IBM press release (http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/29517.wss) talking about market figures in Q4 2010 had IBM at 30.9%, so when you say "held steady" do you mean " held a steady decline"? Please do accuse the IBM marketting team of working for hp, just for a laugh! I think you forgot to factor into your figures the fact that one blades vendor - Sun - has effectively died since CISCO entered the market, and I suspect a some of the CISCO gain is actually from those ex-Sun customers not going down Larry's path.
And then you link to a CISCO figures piece posted on a blog by a CISCO employee? I particularly like the comment on that article from EtherealMind that points out hp are taking more networking bizz from CISCO than CISCO are gaining from all vendors in blades, and that the networking bizz is also the more margin-rich. BTW, how is IBM's networking bizz doing....? Don't get me wrong, I actually like CISCO's gear (but much prefer Brocade's SAN offerings), I just think the networking kit has been massively overpriced for years and their blades don't bring me any advantages over the hp and IBM kit we use now. Oh, sorry, did you also miss the bits where I already posted (many times) that we have IBM servers? Damn, Whittie will cancel my paycheque if I keep on having to point this out to you. I just hope her and Rommetty and Klayko don't get talking, otherwise I could be in real trouble! LOL!
"....only you could read HP's disastrous quarter(s) on every front as a somehow being positive...." No, I merely don't subscribe to the "it's a disaster" POV you're trolling so hard. Yes, Apotheker was a bad choice of CEO, and I posted my doubts as to that here in the forums (you may want to read back a number of my posts if you really think Apotheker was paying my wages). Yes, Whittie has work to do, but it's hardly like the company is another Sun, not when it's still leading in areas like x86, and even after the Apothamess, the company is still reporting profits. It's still a two-horse race, hp and IBM, despite what that whinnying pony Larry would like to think.
/SP&L << the Sunshiner trolls will remember that one!
That is not at all what the IBM press release states. "The overall blade market's factory revenue grew 30.9 percent." They are saying that the overall blade market grew by 30.9% while IBM's grew by 61.4%. The 30.9% number has nothing to do with IBM. It is the total blade market growth in Q4 of 2009.
I do agree that even if Cisco takes a large bite out of HP, it is probably a net loss for Cisco. It takes a lot of low margin x86 servers to equal the amount of profit Cisco makes on their golden switches. It is a poor strategy on Cisco's part. If Cisco takes out two HP server customers with UCS and HP takes out one Cisco network customer with ProCurve/3COM, that is probably a net profitability loss for Cisco. Even if they retain their networking customers, the price competition means they will be selling them at a much lower margin than prior years. I think Cisco is going to be in some trouble. Not now or next year, but in 3-5 years.
IBM's BNT networking group is actually doing pretty well, considering its niche market. BNT is number two, behind Cisco, in 10 Gb integrated switches.
I think Oracle will be out of the general x86 server business in the next few years. There just isn't enough margin to maintain their interest.
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