Hyperscale Cloud May Push Use of No-Name Servers

Recent Gartner data showed that traditional hardware vendors shipped fewer servers year-over-year in Q1 2016, while growing in market share. Chinese manufacturers Huawei and Inspur had less market share overall, but increased server shipments from Q1 2015 to Q1 2016 by 23.6 percent and 19.1 percent respectively.

There’s also an “Other” category which has nearly half of the total market share (47.4 percent) and grew in server shipments 6.3 percent year-over-year.

In a post on Lifehacker IT Pro Australia, Finder.com.au editor in chief Angus Kidman looked at this elusive “Other” category and why no name servers may become more popular in the years to come.

Kidman argues that hyperscale cloud vendors that use custom server hardware could be driving this trend.

“What’s interesting is that the dominance of Others in terms of volume doesn’t translate into dominance in revenue. The total Others category accounts for half of sales volume, but only a third of sales revenue. Conversely, HP Enterprise accounts for 20% of sales by volume, but 25% of sales by revenue,” Kidman said.

For hyperscale cloud vendors, margins are important. Ordering servers in bulk can help keep these costs in check. 

There are also been initiatives like the Open Compute Project, which shares designs for commodity hardware that is more efficient and scalable in hyperscale cloud environments.

What do you think? Will this other category outshine the legacy server vendors? Let us know in a comment.