Roundup: Gartner, ARM, Active Power, Juniper

Here’s a roundup of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

Gartner: Server shipments grew 14.2%.   Gartner announced that worldwide server shipments in the third quarter of 2010 grew 14.2 percent year over year while revenue moved upward 15.3 percent year over year. "As in the first half of this year, x86-based servers were the main driver of the market; they grew 14.9 percent in units and 29.5 percent in revenue in the third quarter of 2010. Also following earlier trends, the x86-based server market provided an increase in average selling prices from more robust server configurations to accommodate virtualization; these higher average selling prices pushed revenue higher than shipments, and this was the case in the third quarter for all regions," said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner.  The top five vendors in worldwide server revenue estimates were HP, IBM, Dell, Fujitsu and Oracle.  HP also maintained the top spot in server shipments for the third quarter with 715,481, a 32.6 percent market share.  IBM and Dell had 22.9 percent and 13.1 percent market share respectively.  Blade servers grew 7 percent in shipments and 26 percent in vendor revenue while rack-optimized servers increased 23.7 percent in shipments and 32.1 percent in revenue for the quarter.

ARM celebrates 20th anniversary.  ARM holdings held a series of events around the world to celebrate its 20th anniversary, including the opening of ARM6, a new 30,000 square foot building at the Cambridge headquarters.  The new building will house their multimedia processing team that is driving ARM's presence in the embedded graphics market and which recently launched the new Mali-T604 GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).  On November 27th, 1990 Advanced RISC Machines (ARM) was spun out of Acorn and Apple Computer's collaboration efforts with a charter to create a new microprocessor standard.  Twenty years later over 20 billion ARM-based processors have been shipped. ARMdevices.net has a nice summary of ARM history and devices - including the first task for their processor, the Apple Newton.  I still have my Newton!

Active Power deploys backup power for command center. Active Power (ACPW) announced that they will deploy two of their CleanSource UPS systsems at a law enforcement command center located in the northeast United States.  The 600 kVA and 130 kVA UPS systems will provide complete power protection to the center’s surveillance and communications equipment. “The physics of our UPS technology makes it extremely predictable in a mission critical environment, delivering consistent backup power performance. In fact, our systems have proven to be seven times less likely to fail as compared to conventional UPS technology," said Jim Clishem, president and CEO of Active Power.

Juniper deployed at Malaysia WIMAX operator. Juniper Networks (JNPR) announced that Packet One Networks, a leading 4G WiMAX service provider in Malaysia has deployed Juniper Networks MX Series Universal Edge Routers to create a new high-speed, service-enabling MPLS core network. “To deliver the full benefits of 4G WiMAX to our customers and maximize revenue opportunities, it is essential to have a highly stable core network. The deployment of Juniper Networks MX Series routers helps to monetize our 4G network by accelerating service delivery, while reducing operational costs and complexity," said Michael Lai, CEO of Packet One.