Sales leading up to and then immediately following the July 14, 2015 end-of-support deadline for Windows Server 2003 grew by 6.6 per cent year-on-year in the B2B channel, according to recently released data from The NPD Group’s Distributor Track and Reseller Tracking Services.
However, this increase appears to have been driven more by fairly significant average selling prices declines from June through August than the hype surrounding the end-of-support deadline.
To that end, there was a 6.2 per cent drop from June in ASP for servers during July and August.
“To the surprise of most, a continued demand-based spike in unit shipment growth - as a result of the hype of the Windows Server 2003 end-of-support deadline - just didn’t happen the way people anticipated,” says Michael Diamond, Director, Industry Analysis, Commercial Technology, The NPD Group.
“In fact, it appears that much of the sales volume in July and August was spurred by aggressive pricing in the channel.
“There are a number of factors that have coalesced to account for these less-than-projected results, including a switch by many firms to alternative systems.
“Some firms have moved to cloud computing, and others have opted to virtualise their infrastructures, leaving thousands of servers in a ‘comatose’ state.
“Still others are outsourcing more and more of their server-based operations, further segmenting the marketplace.”
