Indian server mart grows 24%

With retail and construction sectors expanding their IT infrastructure in the country, the overall factory revenue of the Indian server market touched $727 million (around Rs 2,900 crore) in CY07 recording a 24 per cent growth over CY06, according to a new IDC Asia-Pacific report.

Unit shipments also grew by 19 per cent to touch 135,615 during the same period. During CY07, the factory revenue of the Indian x86 server market grew by 24 per cent over 2006 to touch $414 million (around Rs 1,650 crore), while unit shipments posted a 21 per cent growth with 126,940 units.

The x86 blade server market recorded a growth of 103 per cent, with 12,146 units shipped, wherein HP emerged as the market leader in terms of the factory revenue as well as unit shipments.

HP dominated the x86 blade server market with 64 per cent of total shipments, followed by IBM with a 28 per cent share.

Amit Dalal, analyst, Enterprise Computing Products Research, IDC India, said: "The blade server market continued to be the hot segment for x86 servers during 2007."

On the same lines, the factory revenue of Indian non-x86 servers also grew by 24 per cent year-on-year to touch $313 million (around Rs 1,250 crore) in 2007. IBM emerged the leader in the non-x86 server market with a 38 per cent share in 2007 in terms of the factory revenue.

The non-x86 server market was driven by expansion plans of major telecommunication service providers and customers in the BFSI sector. This helped the Indian non-x86 server market cross the $100 million-mark for the first time in a single quarter during the fourth quarter of 2007.

"The market was abuzz with initiatives like ramping up of product portfolios and education of customers through events and contact programmes. These programmes demonstrated product benefit themes like hot swapping, reducing redundancy and reduction in cabling, power and space requirements," Dalal said.