'HP leads server market in Q3'

HP on Tuesday claimed that it has gained the leadership in the Indian server market for the third quarter, overtaking Sun Microsystems and IBM. This is based on an IDC report.

According to the report, HP has an overall market share of 32.3 per cent in a market worth $550 million. In Hi-end server segment it has a 48.4 per cent, mid range server it has 37.9 per cent and in the volume server segment it has 27.7 per cent.

The Indian server market grew year-on-year by 30 per cent, three times higher than Asia Pacific market growth of 10-12 per cent.

Pallab Talukdar, Director, enterprise marketing and alliances, technology solutions group, HP India said that the key growth drivers continues to be the implementation of the core banking solutions.

"Not only that, banks are also implementing new applications and enhancing Business Intelligence and data warehousing," said Talukdar.

He said that with the banks implementing BASEL II norms and T+1 settlements, there is a lot for server market to grow. The server market is also buoyed by the ERP implementation taking place in the Indian manufacturing sector, which in itself is growing at a healthy 10 per cent per quarter.

HP added that more and more small and medium businesses buying mid size servers for efficiently and effectively managing their works also contributed to the growth of the server market.

The IDC report also says that the three key server operating systems - Unix, Windows and Linux continue to grow in the Indian server market.

"There is a robust growth in all the three operating systems," said Talukdar.

The Year-on-Year growth in the server market in terms of units sold is estimated to be almost 46 per cent, with Linux growing the fastest at 89.9 per cent, followed by Windows (44.7 per cent) and Unix (35.5 per cent) respectively. However, Windows continues to have the largest share of the Indian cake with 63.3 per cent market share followed by Linux at 18.1 per cent and Unix 8.9 per cent.

In terms of revenues, Linux has registered a 133.4 per cent YoY growth, the highest compared to Windows 28.8 per cent and Unix 10.6 per cent. The unit growth of these players is greater than its revenue, there by indicating a fall in the prices of the servers.

Talukdar said that Unix is expected to grow at faster rate in India than its growth in other parts because in India computerisation is picking up. He added that more academic and high performance computing research is being done on Linux and added that HP will continue to promote Linux.