Hot spot forecast of server product market in 2005

Prediction of hot spots in the server market in 2005

if you are a server channel, you must want to know what the hot spots in this field will be in 2005. But on the whole, there are not many bright spots of servers this year. As an article published in this journal once said, the server field may enter an "ice age" in 2005

why? It will take at least half a year from the launch of new products to the maturity of the market. Although Microsoft has announced that the windows operating system supporting 64 bit x86 will be released in 2005, from the perspective of software, the licensing fee standard of dual core products is still chaotic, and the maturity of related application support also needs a period of time to cultivate. From many aspects, The dual core Opteron and dual core Itanium systems will not affect the market in 2005. Computers can read this data block too loudly

server channels in 2005 should pay more attention to four aspects: nocona server, blade server, server cluster and functional server

nocona hot throughout the year

nocona server will be the hot spot of the middle and low-end server market in 2005. Since the nocona processor was released in the second half of 2004, almost all server manufacturers have followed, and after about half a year of market ripening, the whole market has accepted the concept of 64 bit computing. In 2005, nocona will perform smoothly in the server market on the premise that it has successfully completed the evolution from 32-bit to strong

however, saying that nocona is hot throughout the year does not make the server channel blindly optimistic. The heat in this not only means that the market has fully accepted nocona servers, but also describes the competition in the whole market

perhaps many server channels' feelings about this year's competition are not "hot", but "hot", or even "burning". After 2004, the channels will have a deep understanding of this. The profits of servers have fallen again and again, and the gross profit margin left to the whole channel has fallen from more than 20% to less than 12%. Almost all channels are struggling in the price abyss

the integration with ISV applications this year will be the "highlight" of 2005. It is useless to fight for hardware. Channels have actively or passively begun to penetrate into the application field. The server channel in 2005 will strengthen the development of applications and the sales of overall solutions

in addition, for some server manufacturers, they did not consume all the old products in 2004, and a large number of old Xeon products were not sold. If they quickly cut into new products, it will be a test for the inventory of old products. In the first half of 2005, they will focus on the inventory cleaning of old Xeon servers, and the server channels in cities below level 3 will benefit from this, because the receiving time of users in these areas will usually be extended by half a year to about a year than normal, and there will still be a big market for old Xeon servers here

blade servers are getting better

nocona appears almost simultaneously on tower servers, rack servers and blade servers. For example, this phenomenon clearly shows that blade servers will leap into the mainstream market in 2005

this is not a strong exaggeration. Blade servers made good progress in 2004, and began to integrate into the commercial field from the past high-performance industry. Although the current financial, telecommunications and other industries are not the mainstream of this procurement, it has been sold in petroleum, meteorology, life sciences, securities, manufacturing, retail and many other industries

the promotion of upstream manufacturers will also be the reason for the rapid development of blade servers this year. After the establishment of the alliance, IBM and Intel have invited storage and networking equipment providers such as Boko, Nortel, D-Link and so on to join in to manufacture other blade products for the BladeCenter standard; Moreover, HP even announced the details of its cooperation with Cisco, a large manufacturer of Heluo, in the research and development of blade switches, whose functions are comparable to Cisco's 2970 Ethernet switches

the cooperation between these large manufacturers only gives the server channel an appearance, and the deeper meaning will make the channels look at blade servers differently in 2005. That is, through the sales of blade servers, channels can pay attention to more technical fields. The most obvious performance is that through the integrated sales of this kind of integrated computing, networking and application of blade servers, it will bring more added value to channels, and it is easier to stimulate the enthusiasm of channels to sell the overall plan

here is also a suggestion for interested channels:

channels must remember this basic principle: only those customers with business integration processes will buy blade servers, and blade servers will reflect the advantages of integration. The channel must find such customers, and only by adding management system, middleware and even service consulting to this hardware can we sell blade servers well

as for the server cluster, it is not dimmed by the impact of blade servers. It will go down the altar in 2005 and transfer from the manufacturer side to channel sales. In 2004, the education industry dominated by colleges and universities and the scientific research field dominated by research institutes contributed a lot to this product. In 2005, the demand of these two industries will continue to rise, and server channels need to pay attention

function server fever in the second half of the year

function server did not make great progress in 2004, but there may be progress in the second half of 2005. Among the key industries, the government and education will bear the brunt. The customization demand for servers in these two industries will be the most obvious in 2005, and the consideration of security and ease of use will become more and more obvious. These have long been "opportunities" for special functional servers. When designing general testing machines for servers, people should not ignore them. (end)