Hyperscalers continues to spend towards building robust data centres.
India’s economy is on the verge of gaining momentum post Covid-19 lockdown and roll out of coronavirus vaccines. From an enterprise spending perspective, analyst firm IDC, anticipates investments in compute to come from global hyperscalers and local DC players, telecommunications vertical, banking sector, and manufacturing vertical.
Telecommunications spending would be focused on network modernisation, VAS services, and preparing for 5G roll out. At present, India x86 server market is expected to witness a year on year (YoY) growth in value by 29.7per cent during the period of 2020-2021, according to the latest IDC WW Quarterly Server Forecast, Q4 2020 (March 2021 Release).
The overall server market in India witnessed a year-over-year (YoY) decline of 11.2per cent in terms of revenue to reach US$266.1 million in Q4 2020 (Oct-Dec) versus US$299.6 million in Q4 2019, according to the latest IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, Q4 2020 (March 2021 release). The x86 server market contribution grew to 92.9per cent in terms of revenue, a growth of 4.8 percentage points over last year same quarter.
The highest contribution in the x86 market mainly came from the professional services, telecommunications, and manufacturing verticals. In the professional services vertical, original design manufacturers (ODM) and new-age IT companies witnessed positive YoY growth with respect to the server spend. At the processor brand level, AMD witnessed YoY revenue growth of 4.7 percentage points claiming a revenue share of 8.4per cent at the end of Q4 2020.
The x86 server market in terms of revenue declined YoY by 6.3per cent to reach US$247.2 million in Q4 2020 from US$264.0 million in Q4 2019. The contribution largely came from the custom-built server category with revenue growth of 28.7per cent YoY.
Hyperscalers continues to spend towards building robust data centres and support the global and local customer demands. The General-purpose server revenue declined by 13.4per cent due to the weakening demand across different industries. During Q4 2020, verticals such as utilities, resource industries, and securities and investment services witnessed the highest YoY growth in terms of revenue at 331.5per cent, 218.7per cent, and 160.6 per cent respectively.
The non-x86 server market declined YoY by 47.1per cent to reach US$18.9 million in revenue in Q4 2020. IBM continues to dominate the market accounting for 49.4per cent of revenue share, during Q4 2020 with a revenue of US$9.3 million. HPE came at second position followed by Oracle with a revenue share of 27.8per cent and 8.3per cent respectively.
In Q4 2020, Dell Technologies emerged as the top vendor in the India x86 server market with a revenue share of 29.6per cent and a revenue of US$73.1 million. Top three verticals for Dell Technologies were professional services, banking, and discrete manufacturing. HPE came at second spot with a revenue share of 19.5per cent and a revenue of US$48.2 million.
Key verticals for HPE were telecommunications, discrete manufacturing, and professional services, said Harshal Udatewar market analyst Server at IDC India.
At number three is Lenovo with a revenue share of 10.9per cent and a revenue of US$27.0 million. Cisco came in fourth accounting for a revenue share of 9.1per cent and a revenue of US$22.6 million.
“During 2020, the server market failed to recover as it remains impacted due to the pandemic. For 2021, we expect the server market demand to grow across hyperscalers, local data center players, telecommunication companies, banking and financial institutions, and manufacturing firms. Government pipeline looks promising and can expect spend in H2 2021,” Udatewar noted.
