Sinking Sun scuppers Oracle server figures
Oracle server sales tumble...again
SaaS data loss: The problem you didn’t know you had
Oracle's standing in the EMEA server space took another battering during Q1 as sales collapsed in a market that posted double-digit growth, underpinned by high-end and mid-range shipments supporting virtualisation and cloud deployments.
The US behemoth saw revenues plummet by almost 20 per cent to $241m, pushing down its market share from 9.5 per cent a year ago to 6.9 per cent, while the total market climbed 10.8 per cent to $3,5bn.
Nathaniel Martinez, IDC research director in the Enterprise Server Group, said Oracle accounted for more than 70 per cent of overall RISC Unix sales but bore the brunt of the weakened segment.
"The whole RISC and UNIX market remains in the doldrums with customers continuing to adopt a wait and see attitude [as they assess recent tech advances on x86, at chip and systems level, designed to boost reliability, availability and security]," he told El Reg.
In contrast, x86 machines were again the major growth engine, accounting for 66.6 per cent of the market or £2.3bn; it is now the 17th consecutive quarter that the platform has outstripped enterprise boxes running CISC RISC EPIC processors.
Martinez said server sales were being driven by the ongoing transformation of the data centre as medium and large organisations look to gain efficiencies through virtualisation, automation and cloud strategies.
Market giants HP, IBM and Dell were on their uppers in the quarter, bagging total market growth of 10 per cent, 33 per cent and 10 per cent respectively. ®
COMMENTS
Shock, Horror
May be down to
the price is too high
the lead times too long
the ordering process a joke
the support costs ridiculous
their attitude to customer stinks
partners are not selling due to all the above
AND THEY SEEM NOT TO GIVE A STUFF WHEN THIS IS POINTED OUT ON A DAILY BASIS
Not surprising
Since the Oracle takeover Sun have become even more difficult to deal with, it takes them days to turn around quotations for anything out of the ordinary, and their maintenance is ridiculous.
You might think every order has to go back to the States to be authorised, every time you make even the smallest change.
Compare and contrast our IBM experience whose pricing is aggressive, and response immediate.
Pity really great kit, crap sales process, thanks Larry.
Speaking as a (very) ex-sun employee...
...who quit the company quite a while ago, years before this acquisition was even a twinkle in Ellison's eye, so to speak, I know I find myself in the rather sad position of having to recommend people NOT purchase "Sun" equipment anymore. I loved Solaris, and still feel that it is a more polished, professional, and generally clean OS than Linux. I know from personal experience that once upon a time Sun servers were some of the most reliable non-redundant computers you could find, and when they did break, Sun service was just Top Notch. Unfortunately, that just hasn't been the case for some time, and ever since Oracle purchased Sun, I personally have heard a steady increase in complaints that match the ones on this thread.
It really is sad; I'd like to think that Oracle is going to keep something other than just Solaris-for-Oracle-DB out of their Sun acquisition. On the other hand, I'm not certain that it really fits their business model to do anything else. Maybe trying to eek some money out of Java. :(
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM implementer’s checklist
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
