An aggressive strategy to expand its share in the Middle East's enterprise sector will see Hewlett-Packard (HP) target Sun Microsystems' share of the Unix market, according to a top HP regional official.
In the most recent quarter for which data was available, HP recorded a 330 per cent growth in its Unix server business, which was "10 times that of the overall market," said Joseph Hanania, Middle East managing director at HP.
"We had a 44.9 per cent share of the market. At the same time, Sun is losing ground and had a share of around 16 per cent. But there is a realisation in the market that they cannot maintain their present high cost of the servers. We have gained business from enterprises that were with Sun before. I see Sun retreating even further in the Unix space.
"HP is in a race to get as much of the regional business that was with Sun. This is becoming increasingly a two-horse race between us and IBM. Even IBM is on the defensive with some of their mainframe clients replacing these with our Superdomes."
Hanania's statement of intent comes as recent data shows that the enterprise business accounted for nearly 20 per cent of the company's Middle East business.
In the Linux server category, HP recorded a market share of 36.2 per cent and grew 217 per cent while the overall market declined by 6.2 per cent. On the Windows front, HP leads with 48.1 of the market.
"We are at a point of exceptional strength on the enterprise side because HP has the right components for each segment of the market," said Hanania.
For the immediate term, Hanania's concern will be to regain market leader status in the region's notebook category. In the second quarter, the company slipped to number two behind Acer, which was bolstered by a couple of major government deals in Saudi Arabia.
"When data comes in for the third quarter, I want HP to regain our status. We are not about to give up our leading position in any category. That is not acceptable.
"The same intent is there on the storage side, where there have been some gains for EMC though we are still the leader." On HP's alliance with Microsoft for its .Net programme aimed at enterprises, the official said: "For the majority of customers who have chose .Net, HP was the natural partner.
"This is because we offered not just the hardware but the full integration that needs to go with it. None of the other hardware suppliers can offer this level of integration.
"As for .Net as a while, what the market needs to realise is that it is not a one-time implementation. It is pervasive and works over a period of time. There were some customers who were not willing to do 100 per cent of it, but were doing piecemeal. That may not be the best solution.
"But I believe that acceptance of .Net will improve with some more time," he added.
The overall HP business continues to record strong growth, up 15.8 per cent during the second quarter.
"We are growing faster than any other IT company in the Middle East and I would say our regional revenues would be four times that of the number two company - IBM."
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