May 31, 2009
The server market is getting hit hard these days – announcements in just the last few months:
- IDC announced the worst quarter for server sales in 12 years (revenues across all server types down 24.5 per cent to $9.9B and server unit shipments down 26.5 per cent to 1,485,490 units)
- Sicortex has shut it’s doors (VC’s pulled out in spite of Sicortex having almost 60 customers and growing sales!)
- MetaRAM, Woven Systems and Quadrics have bit the dust
- DRC Computer was unable to find follow-on VC money and was sold
- Virtual Iron has been sold to Oracle (Virtual Iron reportedly lost more then $15M in 2008 and has consumed more then $60M in venture capital)
- Sun has been sold to Oracle (Sun reported a lost of over 200M in March, up almost 10 X from its loss in the same period last year)
- SGI has been sold while in bankruptcy to Rackable (for only $42.5M!)
- Cisco has aggressively entered the server market with its new converged computing and communications solution called “Unified Computing” (going head-to-head against it’s traditional server partner IBM)
My bet is on Cisco capitalizing on the turmoil and emerging stronger and more dominant then ever before.
Update July 1
IDC forecasts server market to decline through 2010
