Top Server Makers: Can You List Who's In The 'Other' Category?

Breaking Down The 'Other' Server Makers

The "other" gang of server makers is growing. These are the server makers that have been quietly gaining momentum due to the industrywide cloud movement -- building everything from traditional big iron servers, commodity x86 hyperscale servers and even high-density low-power microservers.

According to research firm Gartner, their worldwide server shipments grew 52 percent between second-quarter 2009 and first-quarter 2013, from 25 percent to 38 percent. On the revenue side, they grew 100 percent between and second-quarter 2009 and first-quarter 2103, from 11 percent to 22 percent. By comparison, the number of IBM servers shipped in the same time period fell by about one-quarter. HP lost 20 percent server revenue market share, with 25 percent of the server revenue pie in first-quarter 2013 vs. 31 percent in second-quarter 2009.

Here is a list of single-digit "other" server makers based on research firm IDC's 2012 breakdown of top-branded server vendors and their worldwide server shipment shares.

Also, read the rest of CRN's special report on the server market shakeup, available exclusively on the CRN Tech News App for tablet.

Top Three

The top three server makers -- HP, Dell and IBM -- in 2012 accounted for 72 percent of the server market-share pie for shipped gear in 2012. HP leads the server pack, with 32.6 percent of the market for servers shipped in 2012, IDC reported. It is followed by Dell, with 25.9 percent of the market, and then IBM with 13 percent.

Noticeably missing from this IDC leaderboard are contract manufacturers such as Foxconn, Flextronics and Jabil that build systems for OEMs, Google and Facebook.

No. 4: Fujitsu

Headquarters: Tokyo

Snapshot: Fujitsu makes a number of computer products along with telecommunications and microelectronics. The company is the fourth-largest server maker, shipping 3.8 percent of all servers in 2012, according to IDC.

Fujitsu is known for its high-end servers. Its M10 servers are based on Oracle's 16-core SPARC64 X processor. It recently logged a sales win selling one of its PrimeHPC FX10 supercomputers to Canon that will reportedly comprise 96 nodes, with a theoretical top speed of 20.2 teraflops.

No. 5: Cisco Systems

Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.

Snapshot: Cisco has made impressive gains selling servers. Like Dell, it has beaten the odds and reported a 43 percent quarterly jump in its server business in 2013. Its market share for servers shipped in 2012 stands at 2.6 percent, making it the fifth largest of the server pack.

Cisco entered the data center cloud business in 2009 and has seen tremendous growth. In a recent earnings call with investors and the media, Cisco CEO John Chambers said its data center business would be "a $2 billion-plus business in five years, growing revenue over 40 percent year-over-year in the most recent quarter, and we are not stopping."

No. 6: Lenovo

Headquarters: Beijing, China, and Morrisville, N.C.

Snapshot: Lenovo's ThinkServer systems target the SMB market. Lenovo has ambitions to become a bigger player in the server space and has reportedly been in on-and-off talks with IBM to buy a portion of its server business.

Lenovo was founded in 1984 and in 2005 raised its U.S. presence considerably when it purchased IBM's personal computer business and started selling systems under the ThinkPad brand. In the second quarter of 2013, Lenovo overtook HP to become the largest PC maker by unit sales and was the sixth largest server maker by units shipped in 2012, according to IDC.

No. 7: NEC Corp.

Headquarters: Tokyo

Snapshot: NEC provides IT services and products to business enterprises, communications services providers and to government agencies. The company -- previously known as the Nippon Electric Company -- was rebranded in 1983 as NEC.

The company's roots date back to 1899 when founders Kunihiko Iwadare and Takeshiro Maeda established Nippon Electric Limited Partnership, whose main business was maintenance of telephones and switches. In 2012 the company shipped 1.7 percent of all servers globally and is ranked as the No. 7 server maker in terms of units shipped, according to IDC.

No. 8: Sugon (formerly Dawning Info Systems)

Headquarters: Beijing, China

Snapshot: In 2011, IDC ranked Sugon as a top 10 server maker in the world, with sales up 62 percent over the previous year. In 2012, Sugon retained its top-10 ranking, coming in at No. 8 for server shipments. The company makes a number of server products from rack-mounted, tower, blade and high-density servers, along with offering a number of cloud computing services.

No. 9: Inspur Group

Headquarters: Jinan, China

Snapshot: IDC ranks Inspur Group as owning 1.4 percent of all global server shipments in 2012. The China-based company builds servers and develops IaaS, PaaS and SaaS software to run on the hardware it builds. The Inspur Group was formed in 2011 when Shandong Inspur Software, Inspur Electronic Information and Inspur Electronic Information Company established a cloud computing joint venture, with each holding a 33.3 percent stake, according to Reuters.

No. 10: Oracle

Headquarters: Redwood Shores, Calif.

Snapshot: Oracle develops, manufactures, markets, hosts and supports database and middleware software, applications software and hardware systems. It employs 120,000 and was founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates. IDC ranks Oracle as the No. 10 server maker, shipping 1.1 percent of all servers in 2012.

Oracles servers include built-in virtualization, cloud management and systems management, and are optimized to run Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, Oracle VM, and Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center. In addition, these servers support industry-leading software for Oracle and non-Oracle applications and solutions.

No. 11: Silicon Graphics International

Headquarters: Fremont, Calif.

Snapshot: SGI servers are specifically designed for high-performance computing jobs for high-end technical and enterprise computing. It also sells servers for data storage, computing servers and infrastructure software along with big data analytics services.

The company was founded in 2009 when Rackable Systems bought the assets of Silicon Graphics. SGI has approximately 1,500 employees worldwide. It's ranked No. 11 by IDC when it comes to server market share for units shipped in 2012.

No. 12: Huawei Technologies

Headquarters: Shenzhen, China

Snapshot: IDC ranks Huawei as the 12th largest server maker on the planet, but it's also the world's largest telecommunications equipment maker. Last year Huawei found itself under a U.S. government microscope for alleged security issues.

According to Bloomberg, Huawei employs about 1,700 people in 14 U.S. offices, and had $1.3 billion in U.S. revenue last year, up from $765 million in 2010.

No. 13: Hitachi

Headquarters: Tokyo

Snapshot: Japan's largest electronics maker, Hitachi, has its hands in a lot of different businesses from financial services, railways, telco services and consumer technology products such as HDTVs. The Hitachi Data Systems division builds big data and virtualization servers and delivers storage infrastructure platforms, storage management software and storage consulting services.

According to IDC, Hitachi is the 13th largest shipper of servers globally in 2012.

No. 14: Powerleader Science & Technology

Headquarters: Shenzhen, China

Snapshot: Powerleader Science & Technology sells cloud servers, cloud storage, cloud computing equipment and related components. It employs about 650 people, was founded in 1997 and builds tower servers, rack servers, mini-servers and hyperscale servers. IDC ranks it as the 14th largest shipper of servers globally in 2012.

No. 15: DEPO Computers

Headquarters: Moscow

Snapshot: Founded in 1994 and now with about 750 employees, this Russian IT company combines the systems integration know-how with its own R&D center to be one of Russia's major computer hardware manufacturers. IDC ranks DEPO Computers as the 15th largest global branded server vendor in 2012 in terms of shipping.

No. 16: Acer Group

Headquarters: New Taipei, Taiwan

Snapshot: Acer was founded in 1976 and today is a $16 billion company that makes a plethora of consumer and business devices from desktops, laptops and tablets to HDTVs, projectors and servers. Acer owns the brands Gateway and Packard Bell, both acquired by the company in the 2007 and 2008 time frame.

Acer is a top 20 global server vendor offering high-performance servers that deliver enterprise-class multicore processing, hot-swappable redundancy, and stability in a space-saving package.

No. 17: Appro International

Headquarters: Milpitas, Calif.

Snapshot: Acquired by computer maker Cray in 2012 for $25 million, Appro is known for its high-performance computing product portfolio. Appro sells high-performance computing products, including cluster servers and software to manage network, server and storage elements inside high-end servers.

According to Appro, its supercomputing solutions support high-performance computing markets focusing on small to large-scale deployments where low total cost of ownership is essential.

No. 18: Groupe Bull

Headquarters: Paris

Snapshot: Groupe Bull was founded in 1931, as H.W. Egli Bull, and made a name for itself capitalizing on the punch card technology patents of Norwegian engineer Fredrik Rosing Bull.

Recent major products include the scalable Bull NovaScale family of Itanium 2-based servers for high-performance computing and commercial applications and the high-availability Bull Escala family of IBM Power5 architecture servers. Bull also has a Bull DPS-9000 mainframe computer range (catering to longtime customers with Bull computer installations) and a blade server line. All new products are available with a distribution of Linux.

Bull also offers services, including IT consulting (from IT architecture and "urbanizatio" to project management support), IT integration and IT operations.

No. 19: Wortmann

Headquarters: Hullhorst, Germany

Snapshot: Wortmann was founded in 1986 and its main products include computers, notebooks and servers, as well as computer monitors and thin clients. The company's main market is Germany; only about 15 percent of revenue is generated abroad.