ACADEMIA

Solaris 10 OS, Innovative SPARC CMT And x64 Servers Fuel Sun To 24.4 Percent Year-To-Year Server Revenue Growth In 4Q06: Sun Microsystems saw its year-to-year total server market share grow 1.5 points, the only vendor among the top five server vendors to achieve market share growth in Q406, according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker. It was the fourth consecutive quarter that Sun's market share grew. Sun moved into a statistical tie with Dell for the No. 3 position in the overall server market. Sun's year-to-year total server revenue grew 24.4 percent, more than four times the growth of its closest competitor. It's important to note that Sun was the fastest growing vendor among the top five in each of four key areas: total server, UNIX, Linux, and x86 revenue. "No matter which category you look at we gained share, firmly establishing Sun as a diverse, multi-platform vendor," said John Fowler, executive vice president, Sun's systems group. "The key driver of our success continues to be Solaris, the only UNIX operating system that can scale from x86 to RISC-based systems. But now is not the time to rest; we're keeping our eye on the road ahead and our foot firmly on the accelerator." Sun outperformed its competitors for the quarter in key areas, including: -- Sun's market share grew while IBM and Dell both declined in overall factory revenue server market share. -- In the Unix segment, Sun's Solaris servers grew year-to-year factory revenue market share by 3.8 points while HP lost 1.7 points of share.