Where are the server wars headed? How will server revenues stack up by the year 2000?

March  1997

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Boston (February 18, 1997) -- Shipment of the Windows NT server will lead the market by 1998, but associated revenues of $16 billion won't even total 60 percent of the Unix market in 2000, according to a report today by International Data Corp. (IDC).

Revenue growth is projected to increase at a 56 percent annual rate from 1995-2000.

The trend will continue through 2000 due to the battle for market dominance, according to the report, "Server Market Review and Forecast, 1994-2000."

The server is the most important part of the hardware segment because it dictates which peripherals can attach to it, what communication ports are available, and what systems and applications software will run. From Intel Pentium-based servers to Cray supercomputers, the IDC report examined the total server market. Unit and revenue figures are given for all products and are broken down into nine pricing levels, seven operating platforms, and three hardware processor designs.

"We've adopted a new market segmentation scheme that is based more on operating system platforms and processor design and organization and less on a host-centric view," Jay Bretzmann, vice president of IDC's Worldwide Systems Research, said in a statement. "We believe this new data is better suited for tracking distributed systems in a more network-centric era."

Among the report's key findings:

• Server revenues will grow through 2000 at a compound annual growth rate of 9.4 percent.
• Intel-based technologies will capture 36.4 percent of total server market revenues by 2000.
• In 1997, NT revenues will reach $5.9 billion, in comparison to NetWare's $5 billion.
• Massively parallel processing will continue in some niche markets, but is unlikely to gain general acceptance.
• SMP will emerge as the de facto processing design standard.

--Ed Golden, IDG News Service, Boston Bureau

Resources

• International Data Corp.
  http://www.idcresearch.com

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