HP server sales overtake IBM

Sales of servers rebounded in the first quarter, with HP topping IBM in system revenue for the first time since early 2008, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Unit shipments of servers jumped 23% in the quarter from a year earlier, while revenue rose 6%, as a resurgence in technology spending by companies favoured makers of low-cost systems.

Jeffrey Hewitt, a Gartner analyst, says the shift in rankings was mainly due to the buying cycle for mainframe computers. In addition, IBM is expected to release a system in coming months, leading customers to hold off on major purchases in the last quarter.

IDC predicts worldwide IT spending will jump 3.8% this year, to $1.47 trillion, after last year's recession, states eWeek.

Hardware makers will be the big winners, with spending on PCs, servers, storage and networking equipment expected to soar by 6.4%.

Emerging markets like China and India are seeing both businesses and consumers ramping up their IT spending, while in the US federal government's stimulus programme has helped spur spending.

3Par has revealed support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation for Servers, according to CBR Online.

The company says 3Par InServ Storage Server customers can choose the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation Hypervisor to build and deploy a virtualisation environment for public or private cloud data centres.

The 3Par Utility Storage arrays reduce customer storage capacity requirements via thin client technologies that break the traditional link between allocated and purchased capacity.