The Four Hundred

Gartner's Dataquest unit said last Monday that the world's server market remains in a funk, despite the fact that the number of servers shipped during the third quarter increased by 3.1 percent worldwide and 12.2 percent in the United States compared with last year. Dataquest said the September 11 attacks make last year's third quarter a poor barometer for comparisons, and that the possibility of war in the Middle East is contributing to poor IT purchasing conditions.

Overall, the number of servers reported to have shipped around the world this year between July 1 and September 30 totaled 1.1 million, up from 1.07 million units in the third quarter of 2001. However, the improvement this last quarter shouldn't be taken as a sure sign of renewed optimism among IT buyers around the globe, warns Shahin Naftchi, a senior analyst who covers servers for Dataquest.

"The performance of the worldwide server market in the third quarter of 2002 should be interpreted with caution because of the issues that existed in the same quarter one year ago," Naftchi said in a statement accompanying the Dataquest server market statistics. "The server market still looks cloudy, with the possibility of war in the Middle East further aggravating economic uncertainty and continued constraints on IT spending, which make it hard to be optimistic about real recovery of the worldwide server market this year."

Despite shipping almost 5 percent fewer servers, the combined operation of Compaq and Hewlett-Packard retained its position as the world's biggest shipper of servers, with more than 332,000 servers moved during the period. Dell, still the world's number-two provider of servers, continued its onslaught into the competition with a reported 18 percent growth in the number of servers shipped, to almost 213,000. IBM held on to the number-three position, with almost 14 percent market share and more than 153,000 units shipped, a slight decline from last year. Sun Microsystems posted an impressive 17.5 percent gain in the number of servers shipped, from about 58,000 to 68,200, which corresponded with a 0.8 percent improvement in market share. Rounding out the bottom were NEC and others system vendors that combined to sell 30.7 percent of the servers last quarter.

In the United States, server shipments totaled 488,858 units, up from 435,620 for the same quarter last year, a 12.2 percent increase. Dell regained the right to call itself the biggest provider of servers in the United States, with a hefty 26.7 percent increase in the number of servers shipped--from just over 101,000 to more than 128,000, which resulted in a 3.3 percent increase in market share, to 26.3 percent. The vendor that Dell knocked from the top of the list was HP, which reported about 126,500 servers shipped, a 0.5 percent decrease from last year, which gave it 25.9 percent share of the market. IBM maintained its position as number three, in terms of shipments, with a 16.4 percent improvement, from about 49,000 servers to 57,251, giving it a market share of 11.7 percent. Sun's market share was unchanged, at 6.9 percent, as the number of servers it shipped remained in line with overall growth in the U.S. server market.

Sponsored By

FAST400

What makes IBM different from Microsoft regarding Fast400??

What is Fast400?

You are hearing a lot about Fast400 aren't you? But what is Fast400? Fast400 is a "tuning" product for the iSeries. Fast400 will allow an iSeries server to utilize the available CPW for interactive processing. IBM would have you believe that these interactive cards that cost thousands to millions of dollars, actually add value to your server. By buying Fast400, you do not ever need to buy anther interactive card for your iSeries. For a free demonstration of Fast400, please visit www.fast400.net .

Why Fast400?

A few years ago Microsoft would not let other software companies build tools to work with the Windows operating system. Microsoft did all kinds of scurrilous things to stop other manufacturers software from working on their platform. They would put code in the base operating system that prevented other companies code from working properly. IBM even had these issues with Operations Navigator. In the early days of Operations Navigator, the developers in Rochester had to scrap early versions because Microsoft did not want IBM leverage on what was proprietary to them. Netscape also had a few problems using the Windows operating system.

The result

Now we all know what happened to Microsoft. After spending tens of millions of our tax dollars in the trial, the US government told Microsoft that they were acting as a monopoly and what they did was not right or fair.

The similarity

IBM is doing exactly the same thing to Fast400 as Microsoft did. IBM has changed the operating system of the iSeries 400 to prevent Fast400 from working. In fact this has been done several times now, and each time the Fast400 developers produce a new fix to circumvent the IBM action. Why does IBM do this? because Fast400 takes money out of IBM's pocket. The potential for IBM to make billions from its user base, for delivering virtually no product is tantamount to corporate deception! Did IBM change the operating system when EMC introduced a low cost storage solution for the iSeries?

The future

The cat and mouse game between IBM and Fast400 is already a year old. Every time IBM changes the operating system to disable Fast400, the developers of Fast400 produce a new version within days to enable it again. Does Fast400 have a commercial agenda? Of course it does. Fast400 is in business to provide its clients with added benefits, which will maximise the interactive performance of iSeries 400 servers. And as we are a business, why shouldn't we charge a nominal fee for that service? A fee that our clients see as being fair and proper. After all, it's not Fast400 that is making enemies in the user base. As long as IBM wants to play "David and Goliath" we will continue to "out" the giant. Fast400 is not running, you can be assured!!

For more information, please visit www.fast400.net.