Bit misleading, Ash, as all the top 3 have seen declining top-end server sales for the years now. To quote your recent Sun results article; "Overall, Sun's server shipments fell 2 per cent year-on-year." What you also forgot to mention is that Integrity revenue is rising much faster than Sun's Niagara sales, and Sun's x86 is definately not setting the world on fire - quote; "And Sun's still young x86 business only grew 7 per cent."

I haven't seen IBM's full figures yet, but I have been told by our HP rep that HP are back on top on server revenue, shipments and also back on top on blades again, so they seem to be the healthier of the three, Itanium included.

I just don't get it. The path away from hyper-expensive proprietary Unix to X86 Linux/Windows was a path well worn 4 years ago. Unless you have a proprietary application that you just cannot move, what's stopping you from moving away from Unix and into standards-based computing?

HP Itanium servers running HP-UX are direct replacements for HP PA-RISC servers running HP-UX. To make specific HP-UX processor generation comparisons to the entire instruction set architecture of a competitor is bogused. It is an uptake rate, not a growth rate. It would be like Sun comparing the quarter over quarter UltraSPARC T1 growth rate to the total HP-UX growth rate.

Second, Matt talks about "Integrity revenue" growing faster than UltraSPARC T1 revenue. In absolute dollars, this is probably true, given Integrity is a high-end server processor and UltraSPARC T1 is a low-end server processor. I don't need Matt to tell me HP's Integrity servers are overpriced. And again, this is replacement revenue, so it is not really growth unless HP is selling more total HP-UX systems.

Matt, I want to see the combined Integrity/HP-9000 numbers. They are the same servers, even the same chipsets, just different processors. With HP-UX, they are the same OS.

Customers need to realize the operating systems which matter going forward are OSs which run on sub-$100K systems. Why? Because a four-socket Tigerton system in November of 2007 is now as powerful as a 16-socket IBM POWER4 Regatta in 2001. And with VMware, it is just as virtualizable. Larger systems are becoming niche players, the new mainframes: capable, and necessary, but low volume and very expensive.

If HP wants HP-UX and Itanium to survive, it should significantly broaden its Integrity blade server offerings. If Itanium is supposed to be the scalable CPU, why does HP only offer two-socket Integrity blades? HP has to make a four-socket, 64 GB memory Integrity blade in the same form factor as their four-socket Xeon and Opteron blades. And then HP should create a double-wide eight-socket Integrity blade. If customers could stuff four 8-socket HP-UX servers into a single C-Class chassis, HP might have something to offer.

If HP does not want to do this, then it is relegating Itanium and HP-UX to a replacement market, destined to shrink in units at the inverse rate of Moore's law (what Sun's Papadopoulos calls "Blue Shift"). In this case, HP has to figure out its post-Itanium enterprise play. Will it be scalable x86 using Xeon, Opteron, or perhaps both? What will the OS be? Windows? VMware ESX? Linux? Solaris? There are challenges across the board here.

Let's be real. The former will not happen. The latter is a forgone conclusion. Tukwila will come, with a common socket it will be able to share with Xeon. Poulson will never see the light of day.

Several years ago, some people speculated on Intel's "Plan B", project "Yamhill". That speculation, repeatedly denied by Intel, was true. I bet HP has an Itanium "Plan B", with chipset engineers making sure Xeons with CSI will work on the Superdome follow-on, and with VMS and NSK engineers working feverishly on x86 ports. But are they porting HP-UX to x86, or is HP-UX a dead OS walking?

"What you also forgot to mention is that Integrity revenue is rising much faster than Sun's Niagara sales"

Is this the absolute increase in revenue, or a percentage increase? And if the latter, how big were the relative bases on which that increase happened? Does anyone have the figures?

I work in the Sun arena, where the ramp up in demand for Niagara based systems has been phenomenal. If HP are selling more than this in Itanium based systems then I'd be really interested to know which sectors they are going into.

HP's plan is to use Transitive Technology to host HP-UX on Xeon.

So here comes Matty again, not sure which HP reseller unit you represent. But Matty apparently have been told by his HP rep that all HP server units are doing great, and he substantiates the claim that it's on top of overall server revenue and units !! The truth is that the only HP server business which is doing really great in HP is the x86 (blades included). Their HP-UX business is decreasing overall, no matter how much they beat the Itanium stuff, the uptake in their Itanium based systems is still not able to offset the decline in PA-RISC. Do a detailed break down on the HP server revenue analysis, and high-end server comes into the RED.

IBM is the only one thriving in the Unix based high end systems, in spite of using two year old Power5+. Once Power6 is available across their systems, their lead will only increase.

Sun is doing remarkably good in the Unix business considering they don't have the cover that HP has in form of a gigantic x86 business. Sun is still dependent on SPARC/UNIX for almost all it's server revenue and considering that the overall Unix market is shrinking, they are holding up pretty well.