The market for servers which cost $1m or more declined by 4% to $16.94bn in 1997 from $17.67bn in 1996 according to market researcher IDC, which thinks the revenues will reach $21bn by 2001. Mainframe growth is set to advance as larger OLTP workloads are supported while sales of other proprietary systems are set to decline. High-end Unix servers will grow most, 18% compounded over five years, driven by sales of Sun Microsystems Inc’s Starfire server and IBM Corp’s SP parallel system. IDC reckons IBM’s winning back S/390 revenue from Hitachi Ltd’s emulators as its new CMOS machines gain acceptance while Fujitsu Ltd loses ground as it transitions to CMOS. It thinks Unisys Corp’s CMOS- based ClearPath systems is having a positive impact with revenue showing gains of up to 10%.
