Dell Server Market-Share Lead Increases Over HPE, Lenovo And Cisco

Dell Technologies has once again increased its global server market-share dominance as the $91 billion infrastructure giant captured more than 20 percent server share during the first quarter of 2019, according to data from IT research firm IDC.

“Dell has a lot of ways to win,” said Scott Winslow, president of Winslow Technology Group, a Waltham, Mass.-based Dell Titanium partner and 2018 CRN Triple Crown Award winner. “If you’re looking for just more compute, Dell is a great option compared to Cisco or HPE. If you’re looking for a full solution with server, storage and networking—and let’s say three-tiered storage like Unity or Compellent or PowerMax— they can win there. The other way they can win is if you’re buying it as part of a hyper-converged solution, they have VMware, networking, server, storage and the hypervisor all included in an integrated solution— so they win there too. If you’re betting on a horse race and you have the No. 1 and No. 2 horses in your front pocket and the No. 3 and No. 4 horse in your back pocket, you have a pretty good chance of winning.”

Dell Technologies generated nearly $4 billion in server revenue during the first quarter 2019, up 9 percent year over year. The company’s market share rose from 19.3 percent in first-quarter 2018 to 20.2 percent year over year.

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Dell’s main competitor, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, lost worldwide market share by having flat server revenue year over year of $3.5 billion. HPE’s server market share dropped from 18.5 percent in first-quarter 2018 to 17.8 percent year over year.

“Dell has strength across the entire server portfolio,” said Winslow. “You have the low end of volume servers, you have midrange and then you have the high-end quad-port servers for application-specific workloads. From what we see, their strength is in their portfolio across the entire compute platform. Then they have a sales team that’s very focused and they have more sellers out there and working well with the channel. When you combine that, it leads to expanding business for Dell and expanding business for partners like us.”

Round Rock, Texas-based Dell also was the worldwide leader in units shipped with a total of 517,000 server shipments in the first quarter, accounting for 20 percent of the total number of units shipped. HPE placed second with 406,000 servers shipped, representing 15.7 percent share.

Last week, Dell reported first fiscal quarter earnings of $21.9 billion in revenue, up 3 percent year over year. However, the company’s server and networking revenue dropped 9 percent year over year to $4.2 billion. Dell executives said the server revenue decline was mainly due to a sales fall in China.

Looking at IDC’s total first-quarter server numbers, the global market increased 4.4 percent year over year to $19.8 billion. Worldwide server shipments declined 5.1 percent year over year to around 2.6 million units.

In terms of market share, Inspur placed third behind Dell and HPE with 6.2 percent share with revenue of $1.2 billion. Lenovo generated $1.1 billion to capture 5.7 percent market share, followed by Cisco with $1 billion in server sales to win 5.3 percent share.