Oracle has regained the #1 UNIX Server Shipments spot! According to IDC, Oracle’s share was 33.6%, up from 32.7% in the year ago period, and 32.2% in C4Q13:
IDC: WW Unix Unit Shipments, Share, Growth
2013Q1
Share
2013Q4
Share
2014Q1
Share
Sequential Growth
Y/Y Growth
Oracle
10,141
32.7%
10,294
32.2%
8,355
33.6%
-18.8%
-17.6%
IBM
10,203
32.9%
11,533
36.0%
6,919
27.8%
-40.0%
-32.2%
HP
7,046
22.7%
6,786
21.2%
6,549
26.4%
-3.5%
-7.1%
Fujitsu
1,174
3.8%
1,141
3.6%
1,069
4.3%
-6.3%
-8.9%
Dell
565
1.8%
499
1.6%
519
2.1%
4.0%
-8.2%
NEC
69
0.2%
81
0.3%
63
0.3%
-22.5%
-9.4%
Others
1,804
5.8%
1,684
5.3%
1,380
5.6%
-18.1%
-23.5%
Total Market
31,002
100.0%
32,018
100.0%
24,854
100.0%
-22.4%
-19.8%
While the UNIX server space is currently undergoing some contraction (on a pure numbers basis), this can be traced in part to an overall consolidation trend, due to the greatly-increased price-performance of our systems. Consider this: one SPARC T5-4 system has 1/16th the number of sockets and 1/192nd the number of cores of the previous high-end M9000-64 system -- all at 5X the price-performance.
SPARC. Solaris. Nuff' said.