The global market for data center infrastructure products improved significantly in the second quarter of 2010, according to the market-research firm IDC. The analysts say the improvements reflect overall recovery of the IT industry from the recession and attribute most of the growth in the data center market to wholesale colocation and hosting service providers.

"More new data centers are being built while old data centers are being retrofitted with new, more efficient data center infrastructure," IDC analyst Katherine Broderick said in a statement.

The data center infrastructure segment IDC covers includes PDU's, UPS systems, cooling products and racks. Second-quarter revenues in this space expanded 6.9 percent and shipments expanded 3.6 percent over the year's first quarter. Year over year, data center infrastructure revenues in the second quarter were down 1.8 percent and shipments were up 2.6 percent.

Emerson and its subsidiary Liebert led the data center cooling market, together responsible for nearly half of all second-quarter revenue in the segment.

APC retained its leadership in the PDU market, despite a 3.3-percent loss of revenue share from the first quarter. APC generated 29.1 percent of total second-quarter PDU revenue.

Eaton led the UPS market, growing its revenue share by 0.8 percent quarter over quarter to 30.2 percent of total revenue.

HP outpaced Eaton, its nearest competitor in the data center rack market, finishing the quarter with 25.5 percent of that market's revenue.