According to IDC's Quarterly Server Tracker, the EMEA server market resisted the tough economic environment well in 1Q08, boosted by a weak dollar/euro exchange rate. Vendors with a strong x86 portfolio performed best, and EMEA factory revenue reached $4.4 billion, up 4.8% over 1Q07.
Shipments went up 8.7% to 680,000 in the same period, showing a slight imbalance in the ratio of unit to revenue and indicating weaker average prices. As usual, Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa were the fastest-growing regions, with revenue up 11.7% and 16.4% respectively. However, Western Europe also performed well, growing revenue 2.8% over the same period of the previous year.
According to Nathaniel Martinez, director of European Enterprise servers at IDC: "The strong results indicate that virtualization is acting as a driving force in the market, as end users discover its possibilities in management and automation. The technology is being used to tackle server sprawl and has particular relevance in the fields of high availability and disaster recovery for SMBs, a segment that server vendors are fiercely aiming at."
Beatriz Valle, research analyst at IDC, said: "The server market is now immersed in a period of disruption and is displaying remarkable resilience in both the value and volume areas. Processor technologies and form factors such as multicore and blade are pushing virtualization to the forefront, and vendors are playing catch-up to sell solutions to the midmarket that exploit these technologies. Green computing will also be a segment to watch."
"Revenue in the CEMA region rose in the double digits year on year for the fifth consecutive quarter, reaching a total value of $850 million, and no sign of slowdown is expected in the foreseeable future. In contrast to the more mature markets of Western Europe, this quarter, CEMA maintained a stronger appetite for the midrange and volume server, thanks to an increase of new business sites and to the SMB market," said Stefania Lorenz, IDC systems research director for the CEMA region.
Sales of blades are now showing what is, by all standards, a staggering annual growth of 53.1% in revenue, while non-rack servers retained their market share of 47.6% thanks to the consistency of their popularity in the SMB segment.