The EMEA server market in 2Q11 reported a growth of 12.5%, with overall sales of servers reaching $3.4bn, according to the latest EMEA Quarterly Server Tracker from International Data Corporation (IDC).
On the volume side, shipments surpassed 543,000, representing an annual increase of 2.7%.
However, the server revenue total figures are well below the peak of the EMEA server market in 4Q07, when revenue reached $5.4bn.
The market continues to be mainly driven by sales of x86 servers, with revenue reaching $2.3bn, an increase of 14.6%.
Shipments of industry standard servers reached nearly 533,000 units, an increase of 3.2% on the same quarter last year.
Non-x86 systems reported revenue of $1.1bn, an increase of 8.5% year on year and 0.4% quarter on quarter.
IDC said continued stabilisation of Unix server sales, refresh activity of x86 installed bases relayed by large HPC deals in some countries in the manufacturing and banking sectors, and strong CISC server sales momentum have contributed to EMEA server revenue growth.
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) recorded growth of 18.9%, with market value rising to $425.38m, making it the best performing region in EMEA mainly led by strong demand in Russia, where many customers invest to refresh their IT infrastructure before the legislative and presidential elections.
Improved market conditions were seen across all three server classes, and volume servers reached $2.1bn, up 8.8% annually, nearly all on x86, and midrange revenue was close to $500m, up 18% with sales in this segment mainly from RISC at 48.8% of the total, followed by x86 at 35.1% and EPIC at 15%.
High-end revenue was mainly from mainframes at 44.1% and RISC servers at 38%, growing 19.8% annually, after surpassing $800m.
HP continued to hold its top position for the 14th consecutive quarter in EMEA, with revenue up 11.6% and sales of ProLiant servers growing annually by 14.9%, to $1.1bn, followed by IBM surpassing $1bn in server sales, with CISC servers up 60.8% and the RISC Unix line of Power Systems up 21.4%.
Mainstream adoption of virtualisation, multicore processing, and cloud computing, combined with hardware sales cycles weakening after the current spike in demand, especially in Western Europe, will compound the deteriorating macroeconomic conditions, leading to weaker server demand in EMEA in 2H11, IDC said.
