Tag: Dell

Asian servers threaten US hegemony

Posted on December 15, 2014 by - News

lenovo-logoA report said that increased production by major Chinese vendors will topple US players from their grip on the server market.

Digitimes said that Lenovo, Huawei and Inspur are likely to ship a total of two million units in 2015, knocking Dell off the number two slot.

Earlier this year, Lenovo bought IBM’s X86 business and that means the company is likely to ship a million server boxes in 2015.

Meanwhile HP, the market intelligence firm said, will show a decline in server shipments of 10 percent this year.

By the end of next year, the combined shipments worldwide from Chinese vendors is likely to amount to nearly 20 percent.

Meanwhile, the multinationals are threatened by ODMs (original design manufacturers) like Quanta, which are squeezing the Dells and HPs of this world by selling units direct at a knockdown price.

Thin clients get skinnier

Posted on December 9, 2014 by - News

Dell logoThe move towards thin clients has slackened after some growth prompted by Microsoft’s decision to deck Windows XP support.

IDC said shipments of terminal clients and thin clients amounted to 1.35 million units in the third quarter of this year, falling by 1.8 percent and bucking predictions.

While Windows XP made some move from PCs to thin clients, public projects were delayed and that accounts for the slippage.

Thin clients represent a massive 97 percent of enterprise client devices.  Within the thin client umbrella, those without operating systems – so called zero clients – still hold 24.6 percent share.

The winners in the thin client race for the third quarter are HP, Dell, Ncomputing, Centerm and Igel.  Of these, Dell saw growth of 16.6 percent compared to the same quarter last year, while Ncomputing’s share slumped by 44.7 percent.  HP more or less held its own although its share fell 4.3 percent compared to the same quarter last year.

Storage revenues continue to grow

Posted on December 8, 2014 by - News

storageThe generation of vast amounts of data continues to fuel the disk storage systems revenue in the third quarter.

With revenues of $8.8 billion, up 5.1 percent from the same period last year, 25 exabytes shipped in the quarter, said IDC.  Capacity shipments soared by 42 percent during the quarter, compared to Q3 2013.

IDC said sub $100K external array revenues grew by over six percent during the quarter, but shipments ODMs (original design manufacturers) directly to hyperscale datacentres showed positive growth.

EMC remains at the top spot for the quarter, followed by HP, Dell, IBM and Netapp.

ODM direct sales accounted for 24 percent of the market however, outstripping the traditional vendors.  And this trend is continuing, as we’ve reported previously, with ODMs also shipping more and more servers directly and bypassing the brand names,

Server revenues grow as shipments fall

Posted on December 3, 2014 by - News

server-racksShipments of servers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) fell by four percent in the third quarter of 2014 but revenues rose by 1.2 percent year on year to amount to $2.9 million.

Gartner said that growth seen in the second quarter of this year was “a short lived phenomenon and marginal revenue growth…highlights the fragility of demand”.

But despite this, revenues grew for the third consecutive quarter following 10 previous quarters where revenues declined.

HP managed to grow its revenue lead in the regions with 6.4 percent growth, although shipments declined by 8.2 percent.  The growth was largely accounted for by demand for rack optimised and blade system.

Dell managed to displace IBM as second in place in terms of both revenues and shipments.  It managed to grow nine percent in revenues and 3.4 percent in shipments.  IBM, of course, is ridding itself of its X86 business to Lenovo, while its RISC shipments were hit by a fall in demand for Unix systems.  Its lucrative mainframe business is in stasis as Big Blue readies new launches.

Gartner thinks one of the problems is that IT departments in enterprises are struggling because there are datacentre modernisation initiatives which means they are taking their eyes off the ball in the traditional server marketplace.

If RISC, the Intel Itanium and Unix revenues are counted as one, they fell in the quarter by 13.2 percent.

Technology causes increasing isolation

Posted on December 3, 2014 by - News

Dell logoDell and Intel have interviewed over 5,000 people with jobs to find out what they think about technology.

It is stating the obvious to say both Intel and Dell want small, medium and large organisations in the 12 countries they surveyed to buy more tech, rather than less.

What’s completely clear is that the days of X86 dominance are well and truly over.  Tablet use is growing, and 81 percent of employees want their devices to perform well. Low powered Celeron, i3 and i5 chips  don’t really cut the mustard here.

Although 97 percent of people spend some time in their employer’s office, 35 percent work in public places for at least two hours a week.

Offices are a problem and 48 percent of the employees are continually distracted with one in five people wearing headphones to cut out the white noise.

A staggering 51 percent of people in their offices don’t talk to their physical neighbours but send them instant messages or emails instead.

A lot of people who work from home benefit from the lack of distraction, with 30 percent sleeping more, and 46 percent being less stressed.  But even this is no paradise as their time is taken up by nuisances such as spouses, children, parents and pets.

Here’s good news for Intel and Dell. Some feel poor technology holds them back and stops them pursuing their careers.

An astonishing 92 percent believe voice recognition will be used instead of keyboards, 87 percent think tablets will supplant laptops, 87 percent think all computers will use hand gestures and 88 percent think keyboards and mice will be obsolete pretty soon.

Dell finds itself patronised

Posted on November 28, 2014 by - News

screen_image_398032_w620Computer maker Dell is planning to expand its manufacturing facility in India.

Top officials of Dell have apparently had words with the Telecom and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and expressed keen interest in expanding its Chennai plant. We assume that they were tapping Prasad for some sort of sweetener for the deal.

Judging by what he told the media, Prasad did not really seem to know what Dell is. Prasad said, “Dell is very interested in electronic manufacturing” which he was clearly surprised about. “Dell has a facility here which they want to expand and have expressed need to have complete ecosystem of components suppliers as well.”

“They told me that Dell employed 27,000 people in the country. They are very positive under (Narendra) Modiji led new government and with growing interest of investors in the country,” Prasad said.

Who would have thunk it? Dell wants to start manufacturing computers and already hires a lot of staff in India, we would have thought that Prasad might have heard of them

Dell has actually invested $30 million in a manufacturing facility at Sriperumbudur, near Chennai in Tamil Nadu.

India’s proximity with the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe make it superior location for export compared to other parts of Asia, Dell officials said.

“They also want to work on Digital India programme which is now a buzz word across the world. They have said that the programme should also be linked to e-commerce expansion in the country,” Prasad said.

 

Apple iWatch faces further delays

Posted on November 20, 2014 by - News

Photo of China from satellite - Wikimedia CommonsLabour shortages in China mean that Apple’s iWatch is likely to be delayed even further, and is causing problems for other multinationals too.

According to Digitimes, the labour shortages are so severe that people like Dell have asked their original design manufacturers (ODM) to start making machines early so they won’t be caught short in 2015.

The lead ODM for the Apple iWatch is Taiwanese company Quanta Computer.

But there’s bright news for manufactuers. It appears orders for notebooks are showing a surge in the fourth quarter of this year even though things will follow a familiar pattern in the first quarter of 2015 with orders few and far between.

The labour shortages have existed for some years but Digitimes thinks they will be worse than ever in 2015, exacerbated by the lunar New Year which causes mass migration of people in mainland China.

The ODMs are mostly Taiwanese companies which have outsourced their manufacturing to mainland China as tensions eased between the two countries.

Samsung squeezes its suppliers

Posted on November 17, 2014 by - News

samsung-hqIn a bid to cut prices and keep pace with its competitors it appears Korean giant Samsung is putting pressure on its suppliers to cut their prices.

Digitimes reports that Samsung wants some component suppliers for its display business to slash their prices, in some cases by as much as 30 percent during this quarter.

The display business not only services the creation of monitors and TVs made by Samsung, but also, and in this case more crucially, displays on smartphones.

Samsung has seen its market share on tablets and smartphones show something of a decline in 2014 and wants to reverse that trend.

The same report said that Samsung is also slashing prices on its OLED displays in a bid to attract more customers to the technology.  Expensive to develop, OLED needs volumes to sell in order to achieve payback for the R&D.

Lenovo and Dell are both likely customers for OLED displays – a significant design win for Samsung if the report proves to be true.

Why Apple’s corporate plans are doomed

Posted on November 11, 2014 by - News, Opinions

Map09_oh_noes_two_elementalsKing of consumer toys, Apple is attempting its biggest push into the consumer market, according to Reuters.

Reuters claims that Apple is hiring a dedicated sales force just to talk with potential clients like Citigroup.

This is on top of its partnership with IBM to develop apps for corporate clients and sell them on devices, the iPhone maker plans to challenge sector leaders HP, Dell, Oracle and SAP.

Of course no one is saying much in the way of details, Reuters seems to think that the deal with Big Blue will mean that Apple will be welcomed into the corporate world and give HP and Dell a kicking.  This will result in the collapse of Microsoft, Samsung and Google’s own efforts in mobile work applications.

Apparently Job’s Mob is working closely with a group of startups, including ServiceMax and PlanGrid, that already specialise in selling apps to corporate America. Apple is already in talks with other mobile enterprise developers to bring them into a more formal partnership.

For example, PlanGrid is a mobile app for construction workers to share and view blueprints. ServiceMax is a mobile app that makes it easy for companies to manage fleets of field service technicians by ensuring they have access to the right information.

ServiceMax, whose existing customers include Procter & Gamble (PG.N) and DuPont, has co-hosted eight dinners with Apple over the past year in locations across the United States. About 25 or 30 chief information officers and “chief service officers” typically show up at these joint marketing and sales events.

But there are huge problems with Reuter’s desire to see Apple in charge of the world. The most obvious is that Apple makes toys it does not make corporate devices. Corporates are obsessed with security, Apple’s iCloud can’t even protect b list celebs from having their naked pictures being hacked.

Tablets were an Apple inspired Fad and any belief that corporates will rush to buy them never really happened. If they are ever adopted by corporates, they will be a low-level function which will require something a lot cheaper than Jobs’ Mob wants to support. Apple really needed BYOD to take off, which it didn’t.

Apple’s success has been due to its cult following, but religion does not work very well when it comes to business. Apple lacks functionality with business systems, corporates also take a dim view of the sort of things that Apple user agreements desire from their followers. Apple is also slow to confirm security flaws, and even slower to fix them. Its insistence on its own security, rather than that of the client also does not sit well with big business.

In short, to get business customers, Apple needs to change its mentality – something historically it has been unable to do. It not only has to deal with the experts in business, such as Microsoft, HP, Dell and SAP, its traditional rivals, such as Samsung are also harbour similar ambitions.

Samsung has confirmed that it is stepping up its efforts to sell devices to large enterprise clients and hired former chief information officer Robin Bienfait to spearhead that effort. It might hit the same experience problems that Apple has, and there is no reason to suspect it will be any more successful.

Apple’s IBM partnership might not be that key to the corporations either. It relies on IBM’s sales team selling Apple projects. IBM has as much experience selling consumer products as Apple has selling into business. Jobs’ Mob also has no clue about business software, which is the key to getting into the business market — for decades its networking technology has been the weak point of the few Apple installations in corporates.

Apple appears to hope that if it can hook the client on the software and content, they will keep them coming back for the hardware. However, that simply does not work in the corporates. Hell, Microsoft was unable to get corporates to upgrade to Windows 7 because they could not see a need.  What chance does Apple’s business model have against that attitude?

Notebook PC sales slumped in October

Posted on November 7, 2014 by - News

notebooksOctober was always one of the months where computer vendors expected to do well.

But, according to research from Digitimes Research, shipments fell by an average of 15 percent.

The slump in shipments affected not only the branded vendors like HP, Dell and the like, but also the top three original design manufacturers (ODMs) – those are manufacturers which make unbranded machines.

The researchers believe the fall was caused because many companies released cheaper notebooks in September.

HP, in particular, suffered a decline in shipments while dell, Asustek and Lenovo also showed a fall compared to the same month in 2013.

The researchers believe that HP will see its notebook business suffer in 2015 as a result of the decision to split the company in two.

Workstation market continues to grow

Posted on November 6, 2014 by - News

hpworkstationDesktop PCs and notebooks might not be the flavour of the decade but the need for powerful workstations continues to grow.

IDC released figures showing that worldwide shipments of certified workstations rose in the third quarter by 7.6 percent, compared to the same quarter in 2013.

A total of 930,894 units shipped and IDC said that this is the sixth consecutive quarter of positive growth in what remains a competitive market.

Worldwide, the Middle East and Africa grew by 39.3 percent year on year, Latin America grew by 31.6 percent, and the US and Western Europe, with market shares of 39.2 percent and 25.1 percent grew by 6.7 percent and 2.1 percent respectively.

There aren’t that many vendors selling desktop workstations but HP continues to be the top dog with a 45.8 percent market share.

Dell grew by two percent year on year and has a 36.6 percent market share, while Lenovo has a year on year growth of 24.8  percent, growing its share 2.3 points and with an 11.7 percent slice of the market worldwide.

Fujitsu and NEC came in at fourth and fifth, showing only single digit market shares.

Tablet demand slows to standstill

Posted on November 5, 2014 by - News

Raphael painting: Moses receiving the tablets, Wikimedia CommonsA report said that during the third quarter of 2014, shipments of tablets worldwide amounted to 63.4 million unit only one percent up from the same quarter last year.

And the impetus for Apple iPads flatlined during the third quarter, largely affected by delays in shipments, according to Digitimes Research.

White box tablets only amounted to 26.2 million during the third quarter and that’s even after Intel subsidies in an attempt to boost market share.

Samsung is the second biggest supplier but the research suggests it will take a cautious approach to shipments during 2015.

The other biggest vendors for tablets are Asustek, Lenovo, Acer, Amazon and Dell.

Most analysts say that the tablet market is close to saturation in Western Europe and in North America – and there are few compelling reasons for people to upgrade from their existing models.

Dell counter attacks against rivals

Posted on November 5, 2014 by - News

Conan 1While Michael Dell was fighting to take his tin box outfit private, his rivals used the uncertainty to steal his customers – now he is counter-attacking.  

Dell opened the Dell World conference and wasted no time denouncing the “turmoil” his rivals in the industry are going through.

“They’re splitting away businesses, spinning off pieces of their businesses, and one has to ask the question: who is this for? Does this actually help the customers? Does it help them create the next great innovative products?”

It is deeply ironic for Dell. At the time HP Meg Whitman was calling Hewlett-Packard a “paragon of stability” compared to his company and IBM smugly told his customers that he was doomed.

Now Dell can point out that Whitman is breaking the the company in two. And IBM is selling its x86 server business to Lenovo and fighting to keep its profits above water.

Because the company is private, Dell does not have to worry about those quarterly targets and can plan.  He even had a dig at Carl Icahn who made him pay millions more to take his company private.

“Dell can focus on a future that’s “beyond the next quarter, the next year or the next shareholder activist,” he said.

Dell’s PC shipments grew almost 20 percent in the U.S. last quarter, Michael Dell said, faster than those of HP and Apple.

Today Dell is expected to announce a new “converged infrastructure” system called the PowerEdge FX, he said, which combines servers, network and storage in a new design that offers “the most density in the world.”

Datacentre automation market worth billions

Posted on October 31, 2014 by - News

server-racksA report by Markets and Markets estimated that by 2019 the datacentre automation market will be worth $7.53 billion.

The report said that demand for fast data access and storage continues to rise and that’s creating more and more datacentres.  Datacentre automation is sometimes known as Software Defined Data Centres (SDDCs).  Automation helps management deal with scalability, flexibility, manageability and reduced costs.

The market research company said it segments the datacentre automation market by hardware such as network automation, server automation and storage automation.  It also values the secor by service including consulting services, installation and support.

The demand for data is forcing businesses to either build new datacentres or upgrade existing sites.

And the cost of datacentre infrastructure continues to increase at the same time as IT budgets continues to decrease.

Majr vendors in the industry include HP, Oracle, Dell, Brocade, Cisco, IBM, CA and BMC Software.

Dell comes back from the dead

Posted on October 31, 2014 by - News

i-walked-with-a-zombie-from-left-everettBeancounters at IDC are claiming that Dell’s US shipments grew 19.7 percent during the third calendar quarter of 2014.

If this is the case, then it would appear that business is turning around for the tin box shifter.

Jeff Clarke, Dell’s vice chairman, Operations, and president, Client Solutions said that the reason for the increase was a strong notebook performance in the US and accompanying overall worldwide growth reflects the continued momentum. He said Dell did not intend to slow down.

“You can expect us to maintain our strategy of investing in the PC business, with more additions to our portfolio to be announced next week at Dell World,”Clarke said.

Dell was showing off its PC business in which it said had its seventh consecutive quarter of year-over-year gains in global share and grew more in the third quarter than its top two US competitors combined.

Dell also talked about its commercial portfolio which appeared to be focusing on higher performance PCs and thin clients.

Dell also claimed there was a growing demand for flexible 2-in-1 products in the work environment with the Latitude 13 7000 Series 2-in-1.

Now that the outfit has gone private we have no way of checking any of this as it does not have to share anything and we have to take its word for it.