End user server spend worldwide 2019-2024

End user spending on servers in 2020 is expected to fall 3.4 percent as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, slipping to 88.6 billion U.S. dollars. That is the view of industry analysts, who attribute the decline to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak's impact on supply chains as well as a change to demand from various groups of IT buyers. Businesses have been forced to consider more expedited adoption of cloud services, and as a result, the market saw a surge in demand for IT infrastructure, notably in cloud service provider datacenters. This has had an impact on the server market, resulting in a more moderate decline compared to other IT infrastructure segments.

Server market

A server is a computer program or device that provides resources, data, services, or programs to other computers, known as clients, over a network. Types of server include web servers, file servers, network servers and database servers, although they are often referred to as dedicated servers because they carry out specific tasks for a specific purpose. In 2019, global server market revenues reached over 87 billion U.S. dollars, with 11.75 million servers shipped worldwide. Where computer servers are used to solve complex problems, it is often referred to as high performance computing (HPC). In 2020, HPC server revenues are forecast to amount to 14.5 billion U.S. dollars, with revenues generated by the HPC market as a whole set to amount to between 34 and 38 billion U.S. dollars.

Server vendors

Notable server vendors include Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Inspur, Lenovo, and IBM. In 2019, Dell’s server revenues amounted to over 15.5 billion U.S. dollars, whilst HPE generated close to 15 billion U.S. dollars in server revenue. Combined, these two vendors have accounted for between 30 and 40 percent of the server market worldwide. In addition to the manufacturers, the operating system of a server can also vary. In 2019, the Windows operating system was used on 72.1 percent of servers worldwide, whilst the Linux operating system accounted for 13.6 percent of servers. Similarly, there is also a choice in the type of processors used by servers, with the x86 variety most used in 2019.