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back to article HP unseats Big Blue as server king

The triple-whammy of declining mainframe and Power Systems server sales and a resurgent X64 market has toppled IBM from the top rank in the server racket, according to statistics released by box counter Gartner. That means Hewlett-Packard has finally fulfilled its goal — since buying Compaq nearly a decade ago — of unseating …

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  1. Charles Manning

    Carly Fiorina

    She was a futurist. Ahead of her time. Her detractors have been shown to be wrong.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      WTF?

      Get a grip.

      The figures aren't an indication of success, for Christ's sake. They mean nothing other than that HP's decline happens to have been less severe than IBM's over the same period - and the likeliest reason is that they managed to get rid of Fiorina before she ran them into the ground.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Praise be!

    I for one welcome our new HP overlords. I've worked in freezing cold server rooms across the globe and HP servers have been a life saver. When it comes to getting a little warmth, nothing blows hot air like a rack full of HP servers.

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    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      RE: Praise be!

      Personally, I find the rear of old UltraSPARC kit is great for warming yourself in a cold DC, followed by the average EVA8100. Blades from just about any vendor are also pretty good for chill prevention, especially ickle two-socket types being thrashed as VMware hosts - smokin'! But if it's hot air you crave, I suggest just standing a few marketing types at strategic points in the DC - boundless hot air delivery, and their idiocy is drowned out by the server fans!

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      Re: Praise be.

      AC wrote "nothing blows hot air like a rack full of HP servers"

      Have you tried listening to an HP "executive" - more BTU's than the servers methinks ...

      (AC because I _have_ to listen to the execs)

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  3. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Boffin

    Big iron slower on the rebound?

    I'm not surprised the x64 stuff has rebounded so nice and quickly as it's usually smaller projects. Smaller projects are easier to postpone than big iron projects, and so many companies seem to have done what we did last year and put lot's of projects on hold. Now that the economy is picking up I expect the UNIX sales for IBM, hp and Snoreacle/Fudgeitso to rebound a bit slower, maybe not properly until after the Summer.

    But, hp has been number one in server sales for donkeys going on number of server units shipped. :P

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  4. Tom Maddox Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    A good start

    And when IBM's power has been eroded enough, perhaps someone will be able to strike a finishing blow into the black and undead heart of Lotus Notes, consigning it finally into the hell where it belongs and bringing peace to its victi--er, users.

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    1. Handle this!
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Spoken like a true Ex Notes R4 victi--er user

      It's moved on since the late '90's - why don't you do the same?

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Notes "improvements"

        Yes; it's moved the same basic crummy program into an Eclipse wrapper, and that works wonderfully smoothly...

        Excuse me I seem to have developed a cough....

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Big Blue loses to HP

    I guess I am not to surprised it has taken this long for this to happen.

    IBM should have gone out of business in the early 90's. IBM lost the magic they had since the 1950's. The CEO that undid IBM's greatness will be forever remembered as the CEO who managed to take a highly successful company and start it on its long road to its demise.

    I feel sorry for all the great IBM people that were tossed aside with managements waffling and getting rid of the excellent people as we can always find replacements attitude. IBM shed so much talent in the following 15 years that I am really surprised it still exists.

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    1. The Unexpected Bill
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      But you've got to remember...

      Even though IBM's focus has changed, I think that saying they should have gone out of business years ago is perhaps an overstatement. After all, they do have a great many business concerns beyond computing and servers...they have had tremendous force behind eBusiness stuff (or so says their advertising--and I have not attempted to verify this further). I think their research and development arm is still going strong as well. They're big in other markets too--ever seen how much IBM point-of-sale equipment is in your neighborhood Wal-Mart, Best Buy or their equivalents outside the US?

      Of course, there is the humorous outlook as well. Someone once prepared a hilarious advertisement parodying IBM's dark times that asked the question "what woud your Gateway PC be worth if they lost a trillion dollars?" and showed a picture of a trash can below that line. (Drat! I see that the ever wonderful and long-online Dumbentia parody site is gone!)

      Isn't it an indication that you've been online for too long of a time when you find yourself saying "I used to remember all these GREAT sites..." Heh.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Why it took so long

    IBM might have had a CEO who "will be forever remembered as the CEO who managed to take a highly successful company and start it on its long road to its demise." but of course HP had Carly so it was a mutual race to oblivion.

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  7. Tom Fleming

    The king is dead; long live the King....

    Although IBM isn't really dead, they certainly need to make their recent investment start performing in the market. The way that IBM laid-off so many, so quickly, they won't be able to respond to a rebounding market very quickly.

    With the disastrous investment in Itanium evaporated, HP has made a marvelous recovery with Intel's x64 Windows servers. In my shop, the Windows servers are still prone to problems that make them difficult choices for long-uptime medical applications. Yet HP is doing great with that configuration.

    Keep an eye on the market, though. Powerful undercurrents bring change from all directions.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    re: Big iron slower on the rebound?

    I agree that the big projects will pick up. The interesting part is whether Solaris will get those "big" projects. According to a study done on behalf of HP, yes, Solaris will get a good majority of those projects... Very interesting article at ITPro. I wonder why HP is not touting this new louder.

    http://www.itpro.co.uk/623683/unix-still-a-hit-for-mission-critical-systems?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ITPro%2FToday+%28IT+PRO+-+Today%29

    Sorry, MB, I just couldn't help myself.

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