HPE dominates server space in EMEA for first quarter, reports Gartner

Second-placed Dell EMC reduces gap to less than ten per cent in European market

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) continues to dominate the server vendor market space in Europe, according to latest figures released by Gartner.

The vendor held 33.9 per cent of the market share for the first quarter of this year, with server revenus of $1.2bn (£928m). Rival Dell EMC is ranked second in the region, with a 24 per cent share in the market.

Server revenue totalled $3.7bn (£2.7bn) in the first quarter for the EMEA region, representing a 32.1 per cent growth compared to the same quarter in 2017.

"The EMEA server market's strong start to 2018 is largely driven by component price increases," explained Adrian O'Connell, research director at Gartner. "The cost of certain components is increasing due to supply shortages, and this is compounded by recent currency volatility increasing the figures for revenue when measured in US dollars."

HPE maintained its number one position, however third-placed Lenovo saw the strongest revenue growth in the EMEA region at 70 per cent. Gartner attributes this growth to a comparison with a weak first quarter in 2017 for the manufacturer.

Dell EMC saw the second strongest growth rate of the top five vendors, maintaining its number two position in the region. It has attained a record revenue share level in Q1 for 2018, reducing the gap between itself and HPE to less than 10 percentage points, according to O'Connell.

The analyst firm reported worldwide server revenue growth of 33.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2018, with Dell EMC ranking in top position globally with a 51.4 per cent growth in revenue. It increased its market share to 21.5 per cent in Q1 2018, compared to second-placed HPE's 19.9 per cent.

Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner, said that the server market was driven by spending by hyperscale and mid-sized as well as enterprise and mid-sized datacentres.

"Enterprises and midsize businesses are in the process of investing in their on-premises and colocation infrastructure to support server replacements and growth requirements even as they continue to invest in public cloud solutions," he said.

Gartner said that the ongoing memory supply constraints are "clearly" impacting the market and driving most of the revenue growth. It predicts that these constraints will continue into the second half of 2018.