Market of DPCs: 10 main events of 2011

Investments into the DPCs directed to support of physical and cloud infrastructure continued to grow in 2011 as customers aimed to increase efficiency of use of IT. They said in installation of more economic IT equipment which can help to reduce costs on a power supply and cooling and at the same time to prepare DPCs for the growing transfer of calculations in a cloud. At the same time there were also changes in how vendors fight for the choice of customers who look for for themselves strategic options. Customers had to decide what suppliers answer their IT requirements better and whether it is necessary to buy in general the new equipment on the future. Calculations in a cloud and pouring rains, consolidation and DPCs in containers - all this led to change of approach of customers and suppliers in 2011.

Let's state 10 main reasons, kayeat aimings at the market of DPCs

10. Expenses on equipping of DPCs grow

Growth of cloud computing and need of bigger efficiency of IT at last overcame slackness of economy, and investments into the equipment of DPCs returned to growth. Gartner in October gave the forecast that in 2011 expenses on equipping of corporate DPCs, including servers, DWH and network equipment, will reach 98.9 bln. dollars that is 12.7% more than in 2010. This digit at last will exceed the former record expense amount reached in 2008, specified Gartner.

Analysts called three main driving forces of growth of these expenses: the increasing use of virtualization helping the companies to reduce expenses on the local systems, the growing efficiency in respect of more dense configuration of systems and new investments into consolidation of DPCs of the third parties.

9. DPCs become "more cloudy"

Transition to use of a cloud was the main and general line of development of DPCs in 2011. According to the forecast of analytical company Synergy Research Group, turnover of the market of the equipment for cloud infrastructure, including network, computing platforms and resources of storage, will reach this year 33 bln. dollars thanks to acceptance of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. It indicates large shift in expenses on DPCs as customers transfer a part of the data processing (or even all) from the selected systems to public infrastructure, whether it be on the squares or in DPCs of the third parties.

8. Container DPCs

In view of the growing interest of customers in DPCs which can be configured and set quickly in the right place, in 2011 the choice of completely ready DPCs delivered in a transport container extended. With such offers there were more vendors, including Cisco with its new DPC in 40-foot (12 m) a container based on the corporate UCS platform (Unified Computing System).

Such DPCs are demanded on military bases, in regions of natural disasters, but it is possible to see them even on a roof of casino. Also, they find for themselves application in specialized modular data centers where can be selected for specific customers or sharing.

As container DPCs are already integrated by vendor before delivery to the customer, they are distinguished by high efficiency. HP, for example, states that its container DPCs save up to 95% of the electric power in comparison with traditional DPC of equivalent computing power.

7. Consolidation of DPCs: the public sector is in the lead

By the end of this year the U.S. Government is going to close 137 old DPCs, and within the next several years this digit will reach 800. It is expected that consolidation which continues to go despite resistance of state institutions will allow to remove up to 18.8 bln. dollars from taxpayers. IT expenses annually as data processing of public services will be executed using cloud computing in the smaller number of DPCs.

The former federal Chief information officer of the USA Vivek Kundra said that the government spends about 80 bln. dollars a year for IT and has at the order about 12 thousand large information systems worldwide used by different departments from Management of social insurance to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Ministry of Defence. Simplification of this huge and fragmented IT infrastructure represents a real opportunity not only to reduce costs, but also to increase efficiency, Kundra told.

6. Costs for a power supply and cooling - question No. 1

In 2011 the attention to cost control to a power supply and cooling of DPCs increased even more. These expenses though grow, but nevertheless more slowly, than it was expected earlier. The research undertaken by the The New York Times edition during the first half of 2011 showed that in 2010 the total power consumed by the equipment of DPCs was from 1.7% to 2.2% of the general energy consumption in the USA that is significantly lower than the former forecast based on the current trends (up to 3.5% of the general energy consumption).

In 2011 DPCs continued to move investments into the new methods allowing to control costs for a power supply and cooling, including new design methods, increase in efficiency and more effective distribution equipment, more economic servers and DWH and even plastic curtains from supermarket to optimize an air flow.

5. Natural disasters showed vulnerability of a supply chain

The market of DPCs in 2011 suffered effects at least of four natural disasters which showed how vulnerable can be a supply chain:

• The flood in Thailand where a quarter of world production of hard drives is located, caused a stop of nearly a third of production capacities of the local plants that led to increase in prices on desktop PCs, servers and DWH.
• The typhoon Nesat fell upon Hong Kong in September, but, fortunately, interrupted air transport of IT products only for several days.
• Powerful passed a tornado broad band through Joplin, piece of Missouri, in May, having broken operation of the IT equipment of many organizations in this zone.
• In March the catastrophic earthquake measuring 9 points and the tsunami caused by it on the coast of Japan broke a world supply chain of semiconductor products for many months.

4. Cisco begins to restrict HP in the server market

Cisco which entered server business only 2.5 years ago at last was included this spring in the list top-5 vendors in North America thanks to significant growth in sales of blade-systems. By the end of the year Cisco bypassed Dell, having become vendor of blade servers No. 3 from market shares of 10.7%, according to these IDC. Apparently, the company will continue growth as its UCS platform will use now not only technology of virtualization of VMware, but also Microsoft Hyper-V.

3. HP: with Arm'om - in DPCs

In November of HP announced development plans of technology which will allow customers to test new generation of energy saving architecture for DPCs. Began with HP the joint project with Calxeda company (the beginner in the server market and the partner of ARM) whereas before Intel was its main thing and the old partner. Under the name Moonshot sharing of resources of storage, network equipment, administrative tools, supply systems and cooling for thousands of economic servers aims to implement this new project. The new platform of development is built on corporate server Calxeda technology based on architecture of ARM.

However HP does not hurry to announce officially that it will sell servers on the Calxeda platform, thereby giving time of Intel to prepare the line of Atom processors for big approach in DPCs.

2. (Cancelled) gambit with PSG

In August announced HP that can separate or sell the division to Personal Systems Group which is the largest supplier of the PC market. Observers asked questions: whether wants HP to get rid of business with a large income, but low marches to aim at a corporate segment whether will be able to continue to sell VAR'Y a complete product portfolio for DPCs, receiving all former discounts, etc.

HP tried to calm partners in the channel and investors, especially after Todd Bradley, the executive vice president of PSG, let know that department is more probable. The chairman of the board of HP Rey Lane which also indicated the probability of department, said that the company had no other choice, except how in advance to announce these plans as it would be too difficult to keep it a secret. Eventually common sense triumphed, both the new president and the general manager of HP Meg Whitman announced that PSG remains in the company.

1. While HP and Oracle fight, IBM increased a share in the Unix servers market

Despite all large changes in DPCs of Unix remains a constant, i.e. the dominating OS. However in 2011 there was a new threat to its positions: a furious dispute between two (from three) the main vendors of Unix servers, Oracle and HP.

In March Oracle decided to stop support of software development for the Itanium platform on which are constructed by Unix-HP servers. This step caused a series of mutual counter actions, and in the face of all industry of the company altercated who that meant in the agreement which so nobody saw.

All this situation forced customers to begin to consider options: whether to save the existing infrastructure or to pass to Linux, or to the IBM platform which last financial quarter became the largest vendor of servers, having selected a considerable share in Unix at HP and Oracle. The dispute is not finished yet.

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