The x86 server has been the fastest-growing segment of the server market in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) for the past several years. The rapidly increasing price/performance, scalability, and reliability of x86 servers with the advent of multicore and virtualization technologies have helped to significantly increase their customer acceptance for the more mission-critical workloads. The use of industry-standard building blocks and economies of scale have made these servers extremely price compelling. Vendors need to constantly innovate to be able to successfully win in this hypercompetitive market segment. Will the x86 servers continue to forge ahead and take market share away from the non-x86 servers? IDC's Asia/Pacific Quarterly x86 Server Strategist Tracker® provides clients with extremely time-sensitive in-depth market updates and insights that help them better understand the key market trends and inflexion points emerging so that they can make better strategic and tactical actions driving their business and marketing decisions.

Technology Coverage and Data Segmentation

This tracker provides total market size and vendor shares for the following technology areas and segmentations. Measurement for this tracker is in unit shipments, factory revenue, and customer revenue.

Technologies and subtechnologies:

• Socket capability: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and others
• Rack factor: Blade, rack optimized, rack capable, tower/pedestal
• Operating system: Windows, Unix, Linux, and others

Segmentations:

• Channels: Dealer, direct, distributor, SI, VAR, and others
• Company size: Small office (1–9 employees), small business (10–99 employees), medium-sized business (100–499 employees), large business (500–999 employees), very large business (1,000+ employees)
• Vertical markets: Communications and media, distribution, education, finance and insurance, government, manufacturing, travel and transportation, and others

Geographic Scope

• Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (13 countries)
• Country breakdown: Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, PRC, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, rest of Asia/Pacific

Forecast Coverage

The x86 server market forecast in this tracker product provides three years of historical market view and five years of annual forecast, with an option for quarterly breakdown. Forecasts are available at the regional and country levels. The x86 server market forecast is broken out by the following dimensions:

• Rack factor
• Operating system
• Socket capability
• Horizontal segment

Delivery Schedule and Deliverables

This tracker is delivered on a quarterly basis with standard format hardcopy data tables and in MS Excel pivot table format to enable clients to do custom data cuts and analysis. The delivery schedule for this tracker is as follows:

• Preliminary market snapshot: x86 server market prelims (unit shipments only) by vendor broken out by socket capability and rack factor —35 days from the end of quarter
• Preliminary data: 54 days after the quarter ends
• Historical data: 60 days after the quarter ends
• Forecast data: 72 days after the quarter ends
• Vertical and company size segment data: 80 days after the quarter ends. A preliminary report is issued 54 days after the close of a quarter that provides a top-line view of the server market broken out by overall, non-x86 Unix, and x86 server segments, which are further segmented by server class and vendors, both in unit shipment and revenue terms. A final report is sent 60 days after the quarter ends. This report contains detailed country tables and the pivot table to enable clients to do custom data cuts. A qualitative report is delivered every six months that analyzes trends in each country market.
• A soft copy of the preliminary report and final reports will be delivered via email as well as through the idc.com tracker Web site in Excel format, unless the client wishes to receive it in another format such as Adobe Acrobat PDF. A soft copy of the database can also be provided to clients via email and through the idc.com tracker Web site in MS Access format.