IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Forecast service greatly enhances clients' ability to quickly and effectively respond to today's server market. Clients are provided with a foundation of market and technology assumptions to understand the factors that drive marketplace expectations. Understanding how global markets and segments are changing and assessing the quarterly adoption curve for new products are business-critical requirements, not only for server vendors but also for supply chain partners and the Wall Street financial community. This product provides insight into customer trends by delivering geography-specific detail across all server segments and presents market data in an easy-to-use, interactive format that allows any submarket to be viewed in a customizable layout. IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Forecast service provides reliable, independent market research data as a foundation for quantitative market and trend analyses.

• Regions: United States, Canada, Western Europe, Asia/Pacific, Japan, Central/Eastern Europe, and Middle East/Africa
• Countries: Country information available on 70+ countries
• Operating systems: Linux, Unix, Windows, NetWare, z/OS, i5/OS, and others
• Form factors: Rack optimized, non-rack optimized, and blade
• CPU types: RISC, CISC, x86, and EPIC
• Server class: Volume, midrange enterprise, high-end enterprise

IDC's server revenue includes components that are typically sold today as a server bundle, including frame or cabinet and all cables, processors, memory, communications boards, and OS. (Other bundled software is included only in AS/400.) Throughout the year, this service will address the following topics:

• Socket capability (the maximum number of cores for a given model)
• Segment measurement: By end-user revenue and units
• Time frame covered: Five-year forecast, with two years of quarterly data and three years of annual forecast
• Shipment type: New shipments or upgrades
• Price band

Our research addresses the following issues that are critical to your success:

1. What are the short-term versus long-term growth projections?
2. How many Linux units are projected to ship over the next five years?
3. How are the regional dynamics projected to change over time?
4. How large of a market share will blade servers take?
5. What are the fundamental drivers moving the server market?
6. What kind of impact will economic or geopolitical changes have on the server market?

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Forecast service allows clients to leverage IDC's expertise to better position themselves in the quickly evolving market for infrastructure hardware. By anticipating technology trends in the market and providing clients with up-to-date quarterly projections for changes and sizing of the server market, IDC is delivering a powerful tactical tool that enables clients to plan for the future.

Throughout the year, this product will offer insight into the latest trends impacting the market. Deliverables include:

• Quarterly data files are delivered 11 weeks after the end of each calendar-year quarter.
• With the purchase of IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Forecast service, clients receive trend explanations and detailed insights, one day of onsite training at any location in the United States, and inquiry time for supporting questions regarding data usages.
• Written analysis, trend explanations, and insights are further provided from IDC's Enterprise Servers: Technology Markets and Enterprise Servers: Customer Trends continuous intelligence services (CISs).