Dell EMC closes gap on HPE's EMEA server lead

Server shipments across EMEA decline in Q2, but sales rise

Dell EMC has closed the gap on Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in the battle for top EMEA server vendor, according to IDC.

The analyst claimed that Dell EMC saw its server market share in EMEA increase just over three percentage points to 22.4 per cent in Q2, while HPE's declined over three per cent to 28.4 per cent.

IDC also reported that Dell EMC had displaced HPE at a global level earlier this year.

Collective ODM direct vendors retained their status as the third-largest supplier in EMEA, but saw their market share decline just over one percentage point to 10.8 per cent.

IDC senior research analyst Kamil Gregor said this is a result of a slowdown in the number of facilities being opened by public cloud players.

"ODM growth has been driven by datacentre buildout of several hyperscale public cloud providers - AWS, Microsoft, Google - in western Europe," Gregor said.

"France is the major exception, with both AWS and Microsoft opening new datacentres around Paris and Marseille. The hyperscalers now focus on diversifying the portfolio of EMEA countries with datacentre presence, which will translate into significant ODM growth in new geographies such as Austria."

Total spend for the quarter was up 28.9 per cent year on year to $4.1bn (£3.1bn), with HPE making up over one quarter of these sales. The number of shipments, however, declined 3.7 per cent to 515,000 units shipped.

Some of the largest markets in Europe experienced shipment declines, with Germany seeing a drop of 14 per cent and the UK a drop of 8.7 per cent.

These two regions however experienced revenue growth of 23.2 per cent and 29.9 per cent respectively as the average order of shipments rose.

Top 5 EMEA Vendor Revenues ($m)

Source: IDC Quarterly Server Tracker, 2Q18