Beaverton, Oregon – June 20, 2006 – Enterprise x86 server customers narrowly favor IBM over HP, according to IT industry analyst firm Gabriel Consulting Group (GCG) in a newly published research study. GCG’s 1st Quarter 2006 x86 Server Vendor Preference Survey queried 212 enterprise customers about their experiences with and perceptions of the major system vendors on a wide range of criteria. IBM notched wins in technology, performance and service categories while HP led on reliability, availability and manageability criteria. Sun Microsystems, with their line of Opteron servers, finished in 3rd place and Dell, one of the largest x86 server vendors, came in last.

“We were surprised by several of the results, particularly the order of finish” said Dan Olds, GCG Principal Analyst and CEO. “We expected to see the dogfight between IBM and HP, but were surprised to find Sun in third place – handily beating Dell in almost every category. In fact, given Dell’s industry mindshare and reputation for efficient and inexpensive products, we expected Dell to finished somewhere close to the leaders in most categories. However, Dell generally finished a distant fourth on most survey criteria, particularly those that dealt with technology, availability and performance.”

 
Although the survey is a snapshot of current customer attitudes and perceptions, Olds believes it is also a predictor of future sales trends and momentum shifts in the industry.

Survey responses were normalized to remove vendor bias from the results. The normalized VPI (Vendor Preference Index) scores are then used to rank the vendors. The ‘Vendor Face-Off’ section of the survey consists of two categories:

• Technology Criteria: 13 separate categories covering system performance, scalability, availability, etc. IBM narrowly topped HP with an overall VPI score of 103 vs. 96, Sun was third at 88.72 and Dell was a distant fourth with a score of 60.62.
• Vendor Criteria:  11 separate categories including quality of service & sales organizations, vendor adherence to roadmaps, vendor track record on keeping promises, etc. IBM takes first with an overall VPI score of 95.61; HP is second at 88.1, Sun third with 80.67 and Dell fourth with a score of 70.8.

The survey was conducted in February and March of 2006. The median survey respondent controlled 25-50 x86 servers and works in an organization with 4,000 to 10,000 total employees. 75 percent of respondents work in data centers that own systems from at least two different x86 server vendors, while almost 40 percent report that their data centers have three or more x86 server vendors.

GCG plans to run the survey at least annually in order to track trends and spot changes in market momentum.

About Gabriel Consulting Group

Gabriel Consulting Group provides technology research, analysis, and consulting services to a wide variety of business and non-profit organizations. For more information, please see the company’s website at gabrielconsultinggroup.com.