HP Tops Racks & Enclosures Chart

Similar to last year, this remains a crowded category with cut-throat competition between lots of players. 7 unique players made it to the Users' Choice club this time. HP takes away the crown in both segments this year. IBM is runner-up in both employee segments, and the third position is dominated by Dell.

Top of mind recall of IT brands yet again remains fairly low in this segment, with 29% or less of the respondents managing to mention a brand name when asked to for racks and enclosures. Which means, there still is a need for the players to be more visible in this space, if they want to build up the data center market amongst small and mid-size enterprises. In any case, HP dominates across all these parameters in both segments.

95% of existing owners of HP's racks and enclosures in companies with 100-499 employees were unlikely to move to another brand in the near future if they had to,with the remaining 5% having no certain plans. However, all of the other players in the club enjoy 100% brand loyalty.

In companies with 500+ employees, HP enjoyed 97% brand loyalty, while IBM had 100% loyal customers.

Emerson needs to be slightly worried because 85% of its existing users were loyal, while 8% said they were likely to switch to APC.

Product reliability is the key reason why users have opted for or are likely to buy most of the top brands in this segment in the future. However, there are interesting exceptions to note. In the case of APW President, across both employee segments, brand name was a much higher factor in the purchase decision compared to product reliability. Also, across both employee segments, none of the prospective customers of APW President said that they would go for it for value for money. In the case of Sun, which featured last in the club in the 500+ employees segment, 100% of it's current users said they went for it for product reliability only.