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Workgroup Servers

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

HP is the winner, followed by IBM, Dell, HCL and Sun, in that order. We had some difficulty in naming this category due to changing technologies and user perceptions. Two years back it was called General-purpose Servers; last year, we called it Intel Architecture Servers. This year, we've named it Workgroup Servers to reflect the fact that there are more architectures than Intel x86 being used. Whatever the change in nomenclature, the lay of the market has not changed significantly over these years. IBM and HP have remained the top two brands. Sun is a new entrant this year in the Club.

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All the players are experiencing lower brand loyalties this year compared to the last. But, this year, IBM has a significantly higher brand loyalty than HP, 80 percent against 68 percent. As per this year's picture, HP stands to gain more from brands that did not make it to the Users' Choice Club than from those that did. Its second largest gain could come from current owners of Dell machines. IBM could make most of its gains at the expense of Dell and then equally from HP and from brands that did not make it to the Users' Choice Club.

If you were to look at the 'Others' line in this year's brand-switch, you will see that more than half of them are likely to switch to one of the top three brands, with Sun being the biggest gainer. This seems to be the story in this segment-a consolidation of the market towards the top three brands, HP, IBM and Sun.

Is this situation any different from last year's, when HP was gaining market share from Acer, HCL, Wipro and to a lesser extent from IBM, and IBM in turn was gaining from HCL and PCS? No. It is a logical extension of that. The score of brands other than HCL have become so small that they have dropped off the brand switch into 'Others'. This year we have a growing market, so even with the consolidation the other brands will pick up number, but the bigger picture is not expected to change dramatically.

2003

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