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back to article UK server market lifeless: Customers just want fresh, young models

The UK server market was like the surface of the Moon in Q3 - there were no signs of life. The value of the sector plummeted 10 per cent to $430m in the three months, led by declining legacy non-x86 systems - down 22 per cent to $100m. Even x86 systems experienced a 5 per cent decline - to $330m. Giorgio Nebuloni, IT market …

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  1. Ragarath

    Reliability and Power

    The only time I tend to update my servers / get new servers is when and old one dies (getting rarer with the reliability) or I need more umph (servers have a lot of umph now-a-days).

    Yes there are people that will always need more or did not properly account for future needs but that number is probably getting smaller.

    This is from my point of view in the mid and small sized markets.

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  2. Steady Eddy
    Joke

    "Customers just want fresh, young models"

    Mmm, don't we all

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Welcome to a 7-year refresh cycle.

    If you size what you need properly, and think about expansion over the next few years (clue: ask your business whats in their growth plan...) then you wont end up over-or-under spending, and you can keep a platform for >3 years and still deliver performance to your business. It just takes a bit of discipline and some basic analytical calculations that are based on understanding what you need now and in the fairly near future. Dont fall victim to the "special offer this month" that is then end-of-life next month (Dell & HP Bladeserver sales reptiles I'm looking at you).

    We've escaped the 3-year refresh by going for large memory systems that are expandable. While our growth in CPU demand is modest, our growth in RAM demand is harder to cater-for without. Just signed up for years 5 & 6 of hardware maintenance on our platform, which has doubled in RAM and tripled in CPU power since it was installed. Big increases in performance/capacity, but not 1 second spent on installing new software, cabling, and working out all the glitches all over again when going to a new hardware platform. For IT departments like ours, its absorbing change that hurts. We just dont have the time to bed-in the latest "everythings different" server generation from Dell, HP, etc.

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  4. The Godfather
    Alien

    'Plight' of the Phoenix

    Challenging times for this 'bird'. Got an awful lot to do to restore confidence and address weakness in performance and asset structure. Bank covenants apply. Not convinced the outsourced IBM Desk-top deal will deliver enough return.

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  5. Rberns

    Are the server rooms are covered by clouds

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  6. Tezfair
    Holmes

    virtualised

    There's been a big push in putting everything into as few boxes as possible now they wonder why no one is buying 3 servers when 1 does all the jobs virtually.

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