Report: IBM #1 in Global Server Revenue, Blades and UNIX in 3Q 2006

Gartner, Inc. today announced that IBM (NYSE: IBM) is the leader in world-wide server revenue, increasing its share of global server revenue to 33.7 percent in the third quarter of 2006 from 32.7 percent the previous year.(1)
This growth was driven by its continued leadership in the highly strategic mainframe and blade segments, as well as the impact of the POWER 5+™ architecture in the UNIX® space, according to IBM.
IBM led in blade server revenue share for the tenth consecutive quarter with 43.9 percent of the revenue and 38.0 percent of volume. During the quarter, IBM widened its leadership position over its nearest competitor, believed to be fueled by IBM's introduction of the "Cool Blue" power management technologies and the launch of AMD Opteron™ processor-based blades.

The report also showed IBM led in UNIX servers, growing its revenue share 3.2 points year-over-year to 32.9 percent. IBM showed particularly strong growth in the RISC-Itanium segment of UNIX sales, increasing its revenue share from 30.9 percent in the third quarter of 2005 to 34.4 percent in the third quarter of 2006.

"The completion of the transition to POWER 5+ servers in the third quarter gave customers access to IBM systems that combine immense power with the ability to create virtualized environments," said Ross Mauri, General Manager, IBM System p. "This translated into a significant competitive advantage for IBM, allowing us to capitalize on customers' increasing interest in using virtualization to consolidate disparate environments, thereby improving datacenter efficiency and reducing overall costs."


(1.) Gartner Servers Quarterly Statistics Worldwide: Database, issued on November 21, 2006