Servers represent a $100 billion mature market. Growth in the server market is being driven by growth in public cloud, high-performance computing (HPC) and edge markets, while the enterprise market remains flat. In spite of often being characterized as a “commodity market,” there are innovations in the server space (Figure 1).
As this graphic shows, the innovations revolve around four areas–consumption, scale, cooling and offload. Considering these innovations is one way to help choose the right server vendor for your specific needs. As an example of considering one of these innovations in choosing the right server vendor, use the opportunity of a server refresh to evaluate vendors that cover both operational and capital expenditure (opex and capex) models.
My analyst colleagues, Tony Harvey, Adrian O’Connell, Kiyomi Yamada, Uko Tian, Jason Donham, Philip Dawson, have authored a document entitled, Market Guide for Servers which provides more valuable advice to help you make the right server vendor choice. If you want more information and guidance to optimize your server choices, this document is a great resource.
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