The Hindu Business Line : Intel sees 20 pc growth in servers

"India is witnessing strong growth in the `high performance computing' space. Advances in 64-bit, dual-core and virtualisation technologies will fuel growth in the enterprise computing and server market," says Mr Vinesh Paperwala, District Manager, South Asia for Intel India.

Analysts expect the server market in India to cross the 1-lakh-unit shipments mark this year.

Stating that the Intel Itanium processor-based server was poised for an explosive growth, Mr Paperwala conceded that the volumes were high for the entry-level servers across segments, but much depended on industry-segment growth, particularly in the refresh, upgrades and overall operational environment.

`New implementations'

"Apart from new implementations such as those in power, finance, oil and gas, SMBs, and tax process systems where people are looking at growth and automation, we are seeing higher growth in application areas and new usage in the retail space. Upgrades, however, is any CIO's challenge," he told Business Line.

He said the `EM 64 T' next generation processor, which is expected to be rolled out soon, would be more reliable, expandable and capable of addressing new usage models.

"It helps to give the CIO (Chief Information Officer) freedom of choice - be it a blade server or a rack-mounted server. Ultimately, it is all about speed. Intel Itanium enhances the processing time," he added.

According to him, 85 per cent of the shipment in 2006 was of dual-core and multi-core platform.

"While Intel Itanium processor-based server targets the high-end database environment, Intel Xeon gives price performance. Customers are today price, performance and power (energy consumption) conscious," Mr Paperwala said.

High performance

He is expecting the "high performance computing" space - both in the technical and research areas - to explode in the near-term.

An IDC survey has revealed that the market for Itanium-based servers would grow to $6.6 billion by 2009.

Over the next five years, the compound annual growth rate for Itanium-based servers is expected to be 35 per cent against 3.4 per cent for the overall server market.