Moving to the server market

For years, the server market, which has formed a more stable competitive landscape, has been a sleepy one-except that you see IBM and Hewlett-Packard taking turns as "Big Brother" and Dale and Fujitsu scrambling for the third fourth, there's hardly anything new. However, the past 2011, but can let the observer in the server field for the spirit of a vibration, because, if only one keyword to describe the 2011-year server market, it must be: "Change." As for "Change" where, and let the author one by one.

2011: The undercurrent of the dance

Judging from the performance of the entire server market, 2011 is absolutely comforting. While the quarterly tracker report on IDC's global server market for the quarter was not yet out, the first three-quarter report showed "growth" without exception. For example, global server factory shipments grew 12.1% to 11.9 billion U.S. dollars in the first quarter of 2011, with global server shipments rising 8.5% to 2.1 million in the second quarter, creating a second highest level of shipments in the second quarter of the year; But global server market sales are still up 4.2% from a year earlier, to $12.07 billion trillion.

The industry, which began in the first quarter of 2010, is generally credited with the global economic recovery, or an eruption of pent-up demand during the 2008 recession. Therefore, although the performance is pleasing, but more worthy of attention is this year's server market changes.

First, this March, Oracle abruptly announced the termination of software development based on the Intel Itanium® server platform, which immediately sparked a firestorm in the industry. While Oracle's reasoning is that the future of the itanium® processor is bleak, the industry generally believes that it is only a matter of day before the oracle that has brought Sun into his arms makes such a decision. For HP, Oracle's move was a "big hit", hitting the company's integrity Kinetic server (based on an Itanium processor). HP's fourth-quarter results also confirmed this: its Key business Systems Division (BCS) revenue fell 23%, the most of HP's business units.

Oracle, Hewlett-Packard's quarrel but let another giant IBM sit "fisherman's benefit". In the Chinese market, for example, IBM says the power server market share has reached 65.3%, compared with less than 60% at the start of the year. However, throughout the UNIX server market, is being x86 the server's step by step, if really less Hewlett-Packard is an opponent, but also an ally role, in the long run, may not be good news.

Hewlett-Packard, after a quiet six months, finally launched the Odyssey (Odyssey) program to help themselves. The thrust of the program is to integrate traditional UNIX and x86 critical business servers to meet the growing number of customers who want to juggle UNIX and x86 key business needs on a single platform. In other words, HP is doing the job of letting the x86 processor-based blades operate on the same Superdome 2 Blade chassis as the Itanium processor blades, while also sharing the high-end features of many of the original itanium® platforms. As the x86 servers become increasingly powerful today, HP Odyssey is bound to have a far-reaching impact on the entire UNIX server market pattern.

Another company that attracts "eyeballs" in the first half is Cisco. Cisco, which entered the blade market only two years ago, has easily overtaken Dell in the first quarter of this year with UCS (the Unified Computing system platform), an accident. When Cisco launched UCS, the industry generally thought HP was the biggest victim, because Cisco and HP had a lot of work to do, and in many scenarios, HP's servers were the first to be hurt by Dell. And, in terms of products, although UCS has been criticized as "closed", but now the market is using data response, the integration route of the product does fit a large number of users needs.

In addition, the domestic server market also jumped a "dark horse": Huawei insiders said that the first three quarters of this year, Huawei server sales reached 185 million U.S. dollars, in the domestic server manufacturers ranked first in sales, a wave, Dawn, Lenovo and other established domestic server manufacturers to abandon the brain, really should be the industry that joke: " Huawei's ZTE has no place to go. Then look at Huawei in the network market has made great achievements, I believe that in the near future, the server giants will have to face up to this "wolf" is known for the enterprise.

In the server processor area, Intel has launched its 16-core E7,AMD, as planned. While Intel does not change its lead position, the area of greater concern is breaking into new competitors: the US calxeda company officially announced the launch of the world's first arm-based server processor, which has only one-tenth of the current energy-efficient server processors in power consumption, This is ideal for applications such as web hosting, big Data applications, data analysis such as Apache Hadoop, and streaming media. Now the ARM server processor chip has obvious "short board", that is, the software ecosystem is weak, its strength is not enough to cause the attention of Intel and AMD, but with the mobile internet and the integration of traditional Internet, the chip companies are facing the final day will come.

2012: Growth slows down, the combination of the wind more prosperous

Looking ahead to 2012, first of all, from the growth of space, IDC Enterprise platform, vice president and general manager Matt Eastwood said that after nearly two years of steady annual income growth, as many system categories of demand stabilized, the global server market growth will begin to slow down, especially EMEA region (Europe, In the Middle East, Africa), North America and Latin America, the demand for servers will decline every year.

But we should see that, whether it's Cisco's UCS, HP's Odyssey program, and cloud computing, which has always been a fire, the idea of "convergence" is looming-though the "convergence" points to it. Today's server vendors already understand that the simple way to sell the server has long been outdated, the integration of the server in a variety of overall packaging programs, the pursuit of vertical integration, the pursuit of integration based on data center level, is the mainstream of the future.

Specifically, at the moment, IBM's focus is on trying to push the cloud. Whether it's a private cloud, a public cloud, or a mixed cloud, it's a total attack. IBM has no Odyssey plan, but IBM is also pursuing the unification of UNIX servers and x86 servers at the cloud level, for example, IBM's newest public cloud SmartCloud enterprise+ can support mixed heterogeneous environments. HP, in addition to the Odyssey program, has been pushing the integration infrastructure over the years. And the Oracle, which has become "Big Mac", and Dell, which has been transforming into a data center.

In addition, for the emerging cloud computing, from the server point of view, the x86 server to build a cloud platform is a mainstream choice, which will accelerate the x86 server to the impact of UNIX servers. And there is also the view that cloud computing cluster architecture to ensure the reliability and availability of the system, therefore, cloud computing is also the x86 server vendors in the technical and quality of the difference further weaken, and the x86 server technology threshold is not high, the future x86 server market competition will be more intense. In short, all of this makes the server market full of variables.

In the short term, the server market power pattern will not change significantly, but after years of looking at 2011 years, it may be found that this is a starting point.

2011 Server Domain Milestones

Oracle abandons support for Itanium

March 23, Oracle issued a statement announcing that it will no longer develop any software for the Intel Itanium (Itanium) server platform.

Intel publishes to the strong E7 processor family

April 6, Intel launches the Xeon E7 series processor. The new Xeon E7 processor uses 32 nm process technology to integrate up to 10 cores, with up to 40% performance improvements over the previous generation.

Intel announces three gate transistors into mass production

May 4, Intel announces a revolutionary breakthrough in the development of transistors-the world's first three-tri-gate transistor, known as the Tri-gate system, enters the manufacturing phase.

Calxeda launches server processor based on ARM architecture

In early November, Calxeda released the industry's first processor based on the ARM architecture, dedicated to server applications, "Enrgycore ECX-1000", the minimum power consumption of only 1.5W.

AMD releases 16 core Hao long processor

November 14, AMD released the world's first 16-core processor AMD 6200. The processor has a maximum performance of 84%, a 73% increase in the memory band, and a half reduction in energy consumption per core.

HP Launches Odyssey Program

November 22, Hewlett-Packard launched the Odyssey program, designed to integrate traditional UNIX and x86 key business servers to meet the growing number of customers who want to take care of the UNIX and x86 key business needs on a single platform.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)