E-Business
Compute, Data Hungry Applications Drive EMEA Server Spending Growth of 3.4%
As reported in International Data Corporation’s (IDC) EMEA Server Tracker, in the fourth quarter of 2014 the EMEA server market continued the strong growth seen in the past few quarters, reporting $3.7 billion in vendor revenue and 630,000 units shipped, for year-on-year growth of 1.2% and 4.4% respectively.
For the full year 2014, vendor revenue was $128 billion and 2.6 million server units were shipped, with growth on 2013 at 3.4% and 1.2% respectively.
This was the first full-year growth in both units and vendor revenue for the past three years for EMEA.
Looking at the market in euros, EMEA in 4Q14 reported very strong YoY revenue growth (10.4%), but currency fluctuations are minimizing the impact on U.S.-based vendors in Europe.
The EMEA non-x86 market showed mixed signals again in 4Q14. Revenue was down 22% year on year in the quarter, reaching $675 million, as CISC, EPIC, and traditional RISC machines all showed double-digit declines.
On the positive side, 4Q14 saw strong yearly volume growth (up 45% YoY), driven by initial deployments of miniature ARM servers in the region.
While ASPs in the non-x86 space declined to their lowest in 23 quarters, the EMEA x86 market has continued along its inverse trend, with ASPs continuing to rise to previously unseen levels.
This increase in x86 ASPs pushed vendor revenue to $3 billion in 4Q14, a YoY increase of 8.3%, while units shipped only saw a 4% increase over 4Q13 (621,085 units).
This trend in rising ASPs was even stronger in the European markets considering the difficult global economic situation.
2014 saw the EMEA x86 market break the $10 billion mark for the first time as vendor revenue grew 9.7% over 2013.
Unit shipments have continued to react more slowly, only seeing a 1.2% increase over 2013 to 2.2 million unit shipments in 2014.
Although the x86 market has shown continued growth it was outperformed by the non-x86 market, which gained 5% revenue share in 4Q14, accounting for 18.0% of all revenue generated in EMEA.
IDC believes this trend is being driven by the emergence of Big Data, business analytics, and other compute hungry applications.
“As macroeconomics in Western Europe continue along the path of slow, tiresome recovery, we believe a key factor impacting spending and prices in the first half of 2015 will be currency. Strong dollar appreciation is playing a role in setting local currency selling prices. If this continues through the course of the year, IDC believes there is a potential downside on discretionary spending, especially in SMB environments,” said Giorgio Nebuloni, associate research director with IDC EMEA.
The majority of this growth can be attributed to continued growth in rack-optimized server adoption — a market that contributed 59% of all x86 vendor revenue in 4Q14 and generated $1.7 billion in spending for the 335,000 units that were shipped into EMEA for 4Q14, to report a 1.6% YoY ASP increase.
Blade servers contributed 26% ($775 million) to the overall revenue spend in the x86 EMEA server market for 4Q14 — a 2 percentage point increase on 3Q14 — though unit shipments continue to slow in comparison to the same quarter in 2013.
Tower servers reported revenue and unit YoY declines of 3% and 4% respectively, to contribute a little over $300 million in vendor revenue for the 146,000 units that were shipped in the EMEA x86 market.
Western Europe Highlights
Western Europe has continued along last quarter’s growth patterns to report a YoY gain of 5% in unit shipments and 11% in vendor dollar revenue.
Overall Western Europe had a very good year with overall spending in 2014 $430 million higher than in 2013 (12% YoY); though this growth in spending was driven by increasing ASPs, Western Europe saw a 3% YoY increase in unit shipments to report 47,000 units more than were shipped into Western Europe in 2013.
Final figures for vendor revenue and units shipped into Western Europe for 4Q14 were $2.2 billion and 465,000 units respectively.
Contributing 76% of revenue share, Western Europe reported slower growth in 4Q in comparison to other EMEA regions.
It lost 1% revenue share to CEMA compared with 3Q14, but a YoY comparison shows that Western Europe gained 2% revenue share from 4Q13.
The slow but stable volume decrease seen by the non-x86 segment over the past few years did an about-face in 4Q14, with unit shipments growing 58% compared with the same quarter in 2013 — reporting a total of 7,500 units shipped into Western Europe for 4Q14, the highest unit shipments in 14 quarters.
“This has been driven by the emergence of ARM servers in the Western Europe market — though these systems have markedly lower ASPs, IDC predicts that as larger vendors begin shipping more of these systems the non-x86 volumes will start to show positive growth. Spending impact will initially be fairly limited, but that might change toward the end of the year,” said Eckhardt Fischer, research analyst, IDC EMEA Enterprise Server Group.
Linux put in a strong performance in the x86 market in Western Europe in 2014, increasing revenue and unit share by 4 percentage points in comparison to 2013.
3Q14 saw the biggest increase in Linux revenue share with a 1.5% improvement over the previous quarter.
The Linux operating system for 4Q14 in Western Europe managed to hold onto this revenue share, reporting 37% of the revenue and 35% of the unit share for the quarter.
This was mainly due to strong quarters in Denmark, France, Germany, and Sweden, driven by the likes of Cray Inc., Dell, Group Bull, HP, and SGI, and the entrance of Lenovo.
“The moderate growth in the Western European server market this quarter was mainly fuelled by increases in rack and density-optimized server shipments, while blades and towers have seen moderate declines,” said Andreas Olah, senior research analyst, IDC EMEA Enterprise Server Group.
“The expansion of hyperscale datacenters by cloud service providers that run on ODM servers to a large extent has contributed to the overall boost. Datacenter projects across the Nordics, Benelux, and Ireland have contributed to positive year-on-year growth in these markets in revenue terms, while moderate declines were observed in Germany, France, and Italy.”
CEMA Highlights
“Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa [CEMA] server revenue recorded growth of 1.3% year over year to reach $906.23 million in the last quarter of 2014.
Year-end spending of available budgets helped to lift x86 server sales in enterprise accounts and the education sector, while non-x86 sales performed well in the government segment,” said Jiri Helebrand, research manager, IDC CEMA.
“The Central and Eastern Europe [CEE] subregion grew 1.6% year over year to $498.54 million, benefitting from demand in the finance and government verticals. Russia performed better than initially projected as government budgets allowed for new investments toward the end of the year.
“Poland was also a surprise, driven by the delivery of several HPC deals. The Middle East and Africa [MEA] subregion was up 1% year over year to $408 million, driven by infrastructure investments in Saudi Arabia and UAE, offsetting the slowdown in South Africa and Turkey due to local currency depreciation.”
EMEA Highlights
Non-x86 revenues continued their steady spending decline (-21.6% YoY), driven by CISC servers (-36.8% YoY).
Windows continues to grow its vendor revenue share and is up 2.3 percentage points YoY. Linux, however, rallied again in the quarter due to some larger deals, to report a 3.7 percentage point YoY increase and claim the largest OS gain for two consecutive quarters.
Maintaining top spot, volume servers contributed $2.8 billion to the EMEA market and gained 9.8 percentage points on the corresponding quarter in 2013.
4Q14 was not kind to high-end enterprise servers, which reported a 32.3% YoY decrease in vendor revenue, with not much separating them from midrange enterprise servers in terms of spending.
Rack servers were the biggest influencer in EMEA in 4Q14, reporting 8.15% YoY growth in vendor revenue and 7.8% unit growth, for $2.1 billion in vendor revenue and 34,000 units shipped into the EMEA market in 3Q14.
Fifty selected young unemployed Nigerians have completed a four-week intensive digital skills bootcamp under the Digital Literacy for All (DL4ALL) initiative, gaining practical training in Data Science, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and IT Essentials.
The programme, a collaborative effort between the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and Cisco, was hosted at NITDA’s South West Zonal Office in Victoria Island, Lagos.
Speaking on behalf of the Director General of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa , the Head of the South West Zonal Office, Mrs. Chioma Okee-Agugwo, described the initiative as a vital component of Nigeria’s digital future. “This is not just a closing ceremony. It is the launchpad for new journeys—anchored in digital knowledge and powered by innovation,” she remarked.
According to the Director General, the initiative is rooted in NITDA’s Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan (SRAP 2.0) and reflects key focus areas including Digital Literacy, Emerging Technologies, and Youth Empowerment. It also aligns with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, which seeks to accelerate economic diversification through digitisation, innovation, and skills development.
Inuwa noted that the DL4ALL initiative forms part of Nigeria’s broader commitment to digital inclusion—ensuring that no one is left behind in the evolving digital economy. It also supports the ambitious goal of achieving 70% digital literacy by 2027, championed by the Honourable Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani. This national vision aims to equip millions of Nigerians with the skills required to thrive in a tech-driven world.
He further emphasized the importance of empowering youth with globally relevant skills. “They are no longer just consumers of technology. They are creators, innovators, and future employers,” he said.
The NITDA boss explained that throughout the bootcamp, participants engaged in hands-on learning experiences designed to build both technical proficiency and digital leadership capabilities.
“This is only the beginning,” he stated. “Through our zonal strategy, we are bringing innovation closer to local communities. This is how we democratise access and unlock Nigeria’s full digital potential.”
Inuwa expressed appreciation to Cisco for delivering high-impact training and called on stakeholders to continue investing in partnerships, people, and platforms that drive digital inclusion.
He asserted that the newly certified participants are now equipped to contribute meaningfully to Nigeria’s digital economy—armed with the skills to build solutions, secure infrastructure, and launch tech ventures that solve real-world problems.
At the end of the bootcamp, participants demonstrated their knowledge through impressive presentations that showcased the integration of skills acquired across Data Science, AI, and IT Essentials. Many spoke passionately about how the programme had expanded their technical competence and sparked a drive to create job opportunities—not only for themselves but also for others—as entrepreneurs and digital solution providers in their communities.
Coinbase forecast a hit of between $180m and $400m from a cyberattack that breached account data of a “small subset” of its customers, the crypto exchange said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.
The company received an anonymous email on May 11, claiming to have information about certain customer accounts as well as internal documents.
While some data — including names, addresses and emails — was stolen, the hackers did not get access to login credentials or passwords, Coinbase said.
Still, it will reimburse customers who were tricked into sending funds to the attackers.
Hackers had paid multiple contractors and employees working in support roles outside the US to collect information.
The company has fired those involved, it said.
Separately, the New York Times reported that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was investigating whether the company had misstated its user numbers.
Coinbase shares extended losses after the report and were last down 6.5%.
“This is a hold-over investigation from the prior administration about a metric we stopped reporting two-and-a-half years ago, which was fully disclosed to the public,” said Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer.
“While we strongly believe this investigation should not continue, we remain committed to working with the SEC to bring this matter to a close.”
The SEC declined to comment.
The latest developments come days before the company is set to join the benchmark S&P 500 index, casting a shadow over what was expected to be a landmark moment for the crypto industry.
Security remains a challenge for the crypto industry despite its growing mainstream acceptance.
In February, Bybit disclosed a hack in which about $1.5bn worth of digital tokens were stolen — widely described the biggest crypto heist ever.
“The cyberattack may push the industry to adopt stricter employee vetting and introduce some reputational risks,” said Bo Pei, an analyst at US Tiger Securities.
Funds stolen by hacking crypto platforms amounted to $2.2bn in 2024, according to a report from Chainalysis, a US-based blockchain analysis firm.
“As our nascent industry grows rapidly, it draws the eye of bad actors, who are becoming increasingly sophisticated in the scope of their attacks,” said Nick Jones, founder of crypto firm Zumo.
Coinbase has refused to pay a ransom of $20m demanded by the attackers and is working with law enforcement agencies. Instead it has established a $20m reward for information on the hackers.
The company is also opening a new support hub in the US and taking other measures to prevent such cyberattacks, it said.
The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) presents its report on .ng domain name registration and renewal statistics for the first quarter of 2025, highlighting the continued expansion of Nigeria’s digital footprint. The data underscores a consistent and significant adoption of the nation’s Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD), reinforcing its pivotal role in the burgeoning Nigerian digital economy.
During the period spanning January to March 2025, a total of 40,791 .ng domain names were recorded. This figure comprises 22,236 new registrations and 18,555 renewals, indicating a healthy balance between the acquisition of new digital identities and the sustained commitment of existing domain name holders to their online presence.
Analysis of the registration trends within the quarter reveals a notable upward trajectory, with a 13.92% increase in domain name registrations observed between February and March 2025.
This growth signifies an increasing recognition of the importance of a localized online identity by a diverse range of stakeholders, including individuals, startups, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), and larger organizations.
Notably, the .com.ng extension continues to be the dominant choice, accounting for over 60% of both new registrations and renewals. This reaffirms its status as the preferred domain name extension for Nigerian businesses seeking to establish a credible and locally relevant online brand presence while maintaining global accessibility. The sustained popularity of .com.ng underscores its perceived value among Nigerian entrepreneurs and enterprises seeking to secure their digital real estate.
This upward trajectory isn’t happening by chance. The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) has remained intentional in its drive for digital inclusion and domain adoption. Through public education, training via the .ng Academy, outreach campaigns, and partnerships with stakeholders across the tech ecosystem, NiRA has consistently advocated for the importance of owning a local domain. The current standing of .ng as the second most registered ccTLD in Africa reflects the efficacy of these efforts.
Digital adoption in Nigeria is no longer just about being online—it’s about owning your digital identity. And with a .ng domain, Nigerians are better positioned to assert that identity, connect with local and international audiences, and gain better control over their digital footprints.
As we look toward the rest of 2025, the Q1 results serve as a strong signal: more people are embracing the digital future, and the .ng domain is increasingly becoming their first step.
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