1Q17 EMEA Server Spending Declines by 12.7% YoY

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International Data Corporation's (IDC) EMEA Server Tracker shows that in the first quarter of 2017 the EMEA server market reported a year-on-year (YoY) decline in vendor revenues of 12.7% to $2.7 billion and a YoY decrease of 1.4% in units shipped to just over 530,000. Looking at the EMEA market in euros, reported revenues in 1Q17 declined 9.6% YoY.

When viewing the EMEA market by product, the biggest decline was seen in standard multinode shipments, which declined 46.6% YoY. Custom multinode servers were a standout performer with 101.1% YoY shipment growth, along with custom rack optimized at 48.6%.

"The ODM market was the notable outperformer over the quarter, with revenue growth of 72.5% to reach 5.8% of market share in EMEA. Strong ODM growth is representative of the continued attraction of lower ASPs and greater flexibility in hardware customization," said Eckhardt Fischer, senior research analyst, European Infrastructure, IDC.

Regional Highlights

In terms of vendors, HPE remained at the top of the Western European server market with 34.0% market share, though revenues for the firm fell 21.4% YoY. Dell was the only major vendor to see 1Q17 growth in Western Europe, reaching 21.4% market share.

"Server revenues in Western Europe continued to decline in 1Q17. In particular, IBM server revenues decreased 50.3% due to declining non-x86 shipments and a continuing trend for extended refresh cycles," said Michael Ceroici, research analyst, European Infrastructure, IDC.

From 1Q16 to 1Q17, the only Western European countries with positive revenue growth were Ireland at 0.2% and Norway at 1.1%. Server markets in France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland saw the poorest performance over the quarter, with revenue declines of more than 20%.

"Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) server revenue continued its negative, trend posting a decline of 6.3% YoY to $523.73 million in 1Q17. While sales of non-86 servers declined 30% year over year, x86 server sales declined only moderately by 3.2% YoY, benefiting from HW demand by cloud service providers. The Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) subregion grew 7.2% YoY with revenue of $231.14 million and was the only region in EMEA recording growth," said Jiri Helebrand, research manager, IDC CEMA.

"Economic stabilization in countries such as Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, as well as large ODM deals in Russia contributed to growing HW sales in first quarter of year 2017. The Middle East and Africa (MEA) subregion declined 14.8% YoY to $292.59 million as the economic situation in the region remains challenging and many IT projects continue to be scaled backed. Positive developments were recorded in Israel, Kuwait, and Nigeria, which benefited from demand from the public sector, service providers, and the finance sector.”

Taxonomy Changes

Modular server category: Server form factors have been amended to include the new "modular" category that encompasses today's blade servers and density-optimized servers (which are being renamed multinode servers). As the differentiation between these two types of server continues to become blurred, IDC is moving forward with the "modular server" category as it better reflects the directions in which vendors and the entire market are moving when it comes to server design.

Multinode (density-optimized) servers: Modular platforms that do not meet IDC's definition of a blade are classified as multinode. This was formerly called density optimized in IDC's server research and server-related tracker products.