Converged Infrastructure (CI) will become a primary driver in the Australian server market in 2011, according to IDC analyst Matthew Oostveen, who gave ARN a sneak peak of his 2011 predictions.
“CI is driven primarily by a desire to move towards an automated and managed server storage infrastructure layer,” Oostveen said. “One of the key enablers for this type of computing is virtualisation. Initially it was an enterprise play, but we’re seeing now more and more examples of this technology permeating the SMB.”
That’s one of his ‘hot button’ predictions for 2011. Other notable market drivers include: appliance servers and storage will gain real traction in the market, replacing many traditional database server sales; and 1 in every 5 x86 servers shipped in Australia will run Linux
“Linux has now reached maturity and we’re seeing that with one in every five x86 servers shipped running the Linux operating system. This is a broad based acceptance that Linux is reliable, it’s available and it’s scalable. It’s also being driven by demand in some key areas including high performance computing.”
In releasing his overall 2011 market predictions this week, Oostveen said next year will be the year of transformation with ICT infrastructure at the heart of all activity and spending in Australia.
Managed print services (MPS) will be the “game-changing trend for the hardcopy peripherals market in 2011, replacing consumables as the new pot of gold,” and the all-in-one desktop PC will keep the desktop alive next year (see sidebar for a full list of IDC’s 2011 predictions).
Distributors, vendors and resellers also put on the visionary glasses and revealed some hot predictions for 2011.
Like Oostveen, Ingram Micro A/NZ vice-president and managing director, Jay Miley, said converged infrastructure is the hot market to watch next year.
“We want to capitalise on the growth of the datacentre market and converged infrastructure and lead with networking, server and storage technologies,” Miley said. “Datacentre technologies are the ones that the mid-market centric systems integrators will continue to see strength in.”
Recapping on 2010, he said the industry experienced a “return to a normal” environment. “When we reflect on 2009, we saw the Australian economy improve – not in all sectors – but it was more robust and stronger than North America and Europe.”
Office 2010 and the Windows 7 launch helped buoy the market, he added.
“A lot of businesses in 2009 put off Capex investments in IT refresh cycles – this all played well into our hands in 2010.”
