Sun Microsystems has claimed that it has surpassed IBM in revenues from server sales in the UK despite the fact that it trails to Big Blue globally.

Based on figures obtained from Gartner Dataquest for last year, Sun said that it has grown faster than any of its competitors in Western Europe.

In the UK, Sun posted 52 per cent growth year-over-year in total server market revenue, which includes systems based on Unix, Microsoft Windows NT, MVS mainframe and all other operating systems. According to Sun, it has also outpaced its competitors in other key Western European markets including Germany and France.

The figures are a European breakdown of an earlier Dataquest survey, which pegged worldwide server revenue for 2000 at $53.8 billion. Despite its strong growth worldwide of 43 per cent year on year, Sun still sits in second place in terms of revenue ($9.7 billion) to IBM ($13.7 billion), for the worldwide server market.

"In Europe we're taking IBM out one country at a time, and the UK is a significant market", said Shahin Khan, vice president of computer systems at Sun.

An IBM spokeswoman said this was just the usual sabre-rattling rhetoric from Sun.

She said IDC figures for the first quarter of this year showed sales of IBM's p-series servers (RS-6000) were growing by 33 per cent worldwide against a growth of just 2 per cent in Sun's Unix business. ®