Baseline has an article that caught my eye just the other day. It was a provocatively titled piece on Opinion: Why CIOs Should Pay Attention to Hewlett-Packard.
Essentially, the author noted that the designation of No. 1 IT vendor now belongs to Hewlett-Packard, which has seen its sales climb past IBM’s.
The reason for the rise of HP was attributed to various management and policy changes within HP, and it was full of praise on how HP operates (excerpt):
Move[d] away from decentralized and dispersed internal IT operations to a network-central environment…. and coupled with internal restructuring, has become a telling testimonial to IT effectiveness.
I personally have my own reservations about some of the decisions HP made, especially under its prior management — you know who — but perhaps things are indeed turning for the better. Anyway, I found the furnished statistics for the 2006 server sales to be of interest.
Sales of Servers for 2006 (Last quarter)
1) HP: 8.2 million
2) Dell: 7.72 million
3) IBM: 7.2 million (Extrapolated)
4) Sun: 1.36 million (Extrapolated)
I figured it would be really interesting to see what TechRepublic’s IT professionals, many of you I am sure have years upon years of solid experience, would recommend. So here we go.
(*) I included Supermicro in additional to the normal “big 4” because my contacts in the hosting industry: ReadySpace — an excellent host by the way — swear by them.
And before you go, remember to share with us your tips on the things to look out for when acquiring a new server. Anecdotes about the various vendors are welcomed, as well.
