Under the cloud computing server procurement impact brand manufacturers

At present, the server market is still dominated by brands such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell. However, with the further development of cloud computing, the tendency of the enterprises to reduce the cost by means of purchasing ODM servers becomes more and more obvious . This is especially the Internet providers such as Google, Amazon and other representatives, through the provision of server design standards, and then ODM manufacturers for component production, the final purchase.

The Open Computing Project is a server design standard proposed by Internet service providers such as Facebook, where Facebook can buy inexpensive server components from Taiwan's original design manufacturers (ODMs) rather than buying from Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, or IBM Server. Cloud computing has given the data center a surge in demand for servers and is also more server-cost-sensitive. Directly to ODM custom server can be closest to their own application requirements, to avoid wasting server resources. And bypass the middle part, making the server procurement costs lower.

The development of cloud computing will make these ODMs in Taiwan better off their days. In 2013, Inventec ODM and its servers sold to end users earned NT $ 85 billion in revenues, contributing ODM business to make up 50% of the overall profit. Quanta server revenue reached 60 billion Taiwan dollars, accounting for the overall revenue of 30% to 40%. Quanta is currently China's largest white-card server ODM. Wistron has realized a revenue of NT $ 40 billion on its servers and plans to continue expanding its server business in 2014.

China's Internet companies started massively building data centers under the trend of cloud computing. Based on cost considerations, Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, Intel's United Internet giant, launched Scorpio, Flexible expansion. Taking Scorpio server rack solution as an example, this solution adopts modular design and is divided into six parts: cabinet module, network module, power supply module, server node, centralized fan cooling module and centralized management module. The cabinet module, using the most popular and popular standard size, the actual available space is 44U, up to deploy 120 servers.

In the server market is becoming more popular ODM trend, the traditional server vendors are facing challenges and opportunities. For the brand server manufacturers, the inevitable receipt of the impact of white cards, of course, this is seen from the shipments. But the strength of the traditional server vendors lies in the overall solution, brand server vendors can be customized for the overall situation of the enterprise solution. There are already vendors exploring this model, such as Inspur and Lenovo.

Inspur new server SmartRack cabinet server is deployed in Baidu Inner Mongolia data center. Smartrack is a kind of customized solution specially developed for internet and communication operators. The whole cabinet server breaks the traditional server inherent design framework and abandons the traditional server stand-alone Power, fan, management exclusive design ideas, the power supply, cooling and management unit unified focus.

The Lenovo Group's Enterprise Products Group also announced its growth strategy in the IPDC Internet data center industry while demonstrating several ThinkServer servers for the IPDC industry. For IPDC industry, Lenovo Group introduced products, including ThinkServer family cabinet high-density server DC5000, high-density server SD330, SS430, storage server RD430, RD430X, and Lenovo IPDC industry customer demand features optimized ThinkServer Universal Server Products, SmartGrid Intelligent Power Monitoring Management Solution.

In summary, we see that although the cloud computing companies need to design their own design plus ODM procurement of servers, brand server vendors inevitably be hit. However, opportunities and challenges coexist, brand server makers need a strategic shift under the impact of cloud computing, also from a simple fight the volume of the model to the overall solution provider transformation.