Despite the popular belief that cloud services are well on their way to replacing enterprise data centers, the global data center server market is expected to increase $10 billion by 2019. Valued at $33.03 billion in 2014, the market is expected to reach $43.96 billion in 2019, growing at a CAGR of 5.88%.
Advanced computing technologies and generation of huge amounts data from IoT will lead to the adoption of servers in data centers. In addition, advanced servers are increasingly required for high performance computing and in mission critical servers, which will have a positive impact on the market.
There are currently 3703 colocation data centers (a type of data center where equipment, space, and bandwidth are available for rental to retail customers) across 110 countries globally:
via chartsbin.com
Source: Data Center Map
The United States is the major adopter of data center services worldwide. They are home to the highest number of data center facilities in the world and account for more than 40% of colocation data centers globally. Facebook recently announced they are expanding their data center in Oregon again, this time investing $200 million towards the facility.
The global data center server market is dominated by American multinational technology giants HP, Dell, and IBM. HP and Dell have been increasing their revenue through the sales of their ProLiant and PowerEdge series servers, taking away some market share from IBM. Another American company, Cisco, is gaining market share with their UCS servers which improve speed and agility in data center facilities, simplify data center architecture, and reduce the number of devices to purchase, deploy, and maintain.
The future of data center servers:
Micro servers currently have the smallest market share of all the data center server products but the segment is growing rapidly. The micro server is expected to grow over $3 billion by 2019, growing more than 45% annually. Enterprises prefer micro servers because of their compactness compared to other servers (like tower servers) offering similar operational efficiency. Vendors are looking to enhance the efficiency of micro servers in computing heavy data center workloads.
Currently, the adoption of virtualization technology is at its peak, and micro servers are more expensive compared to other servers. If the vendors in the market overcome this challenge, the market is forecast to have a steady revenue outcome. It is also expected that micro servers will also begin to be used in modular/containerized data center facilities, which will increase market growth during the forecast period.
