White box servers for the data center win, according to IHS Markit’s latest numbers.
White box OEMs — these are vendors including QCT, Wiwynn, and Inventec that produce rack server hardware with OS software sold separately — led the data center server market in unit shipments for the first quarter of 2018. Those vendors accounted for more than 724,000 units sold and 27 percent market share.
White box also ranked No. 1 in data center server revenue, pulling in 21 percent of the market in the first quarter, or $3.8 billion. Dell EMC dropped to second place in terms of revenue at 20 percent ($3.6 billion), followed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) at 18 percent ($3.2 billion).
The IHS numbers come about a week after IDC’s latest quarterly server tracker, which listed Dell EMC as the No. 1 provider in both server revenue and server units shipped globally. HPE came in second in server revenue and units shipped, according to IDC.
Open compute servers also had a good first quarter, according to IHS. Open compute year-over-year revenue increased 68 percent, hitting $1.3 billion in the first quarter.
Overall data center server revenue hit $17.9 billion in the first quarter of 2018, according to IHS. The analyst group said server shipments grew ahead of seasonality in the first quarter, surging 10 percent over the first quarter of 2017. It was also the first time density-optimized blade servers out shipped shared-resource blade servers. In fact, nearly every vendor offering density-optimized blades reported soaring demand from cloud service providers.
And while enterprises will continue to spend more on servers during 2018, IHS forecasts that cloud service providers will purchase more server units this year than enterprises or telcos. By 2022, however, cloud providers will be the top purchasers both in terms of revenue and server units.
For this calendar year, 58 percent of server revenue is enterprise spend ($42.8 billion), dropping to 45 percent ($43.6 billion) in 2022, said IHS Markit Analyst Vladimir Galabov. Meanwhile, 42 percent of server units (4.7 million units) in 2018 are attributed to enterprise customers. By 2022, enterprises are forecast to purchase 19 percent of server units (2.8 million units).
Also in 2018, cloud providers represent 28 percent of server revenue, spending $21 billion, growing to 35 percent ($33.6 billion) in 2022. By units: 43 percent (4.8 million) go to cloud providers in 2018; by 2022 cloud providers will purchase 53% of server units, or 8.4 million units.
Telco spending on data center servers will represent 13 percent of server revenue ($9.9 billion) this year, increasing to 20 percent ($19.5 billion) in 2022. Telcos will purchase 15 percent (1.7 million) of server units in 2018, compared to 25 percent (3.7 million units) by 2022.