It’s anything but doom and gloom for the server industry, despite claims to the contrary. As IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker reveals, sales are actually on the rise, and it all points to a half-decent outlook in the mid-to-long term.

IDC says that “factory revenue in the worldwide server market increased 2.5% year over year to US$12.6 billion in the second quarter of 2014 (2Q14).”

Leading the way was the mid-range server market, which saw sales rise 11.6 percent year-on-year thanks to technology refresh cycles kicking in. IDC says organizationsgg have been spurred on to upgrade by the looming demise of Windows Server 2003, as well as a general desire to obtain the latest and greatest chips from Intel. It also says IT budgets are a little more generous these days as the worst of the recession fades away from view. Also popular was “volume servers”, aka low-end gear, which saw revenues rise by 4.9%.

Things aren’t quite so rosy in the higher-end enterprise segment though, with sales taking a 9.8 percent dive over the last year.

One interesting point of tension in the market has to do with where the servers are destined to be used. According to IDC, sales of gear destined for hyperscale data centers are going strong, whereas sales of gear purchased for more conventional use seem to be sliding.

As far as vendors go, Hewlett-Packard Company remains top server dog. Its revenues grew by four percent as it reaped some $3.194 billion in the last quarter. Currently, HP commands a 25.4 percent share of the market. The bigger news though seems to concern Cisco Inc.’s continued rise. For a vendor that’s not really associated with servers it’s sold an awful lot of them and now ranks in the top five with an admirable 35.4 percent growth over the last 12 months.

Worldwide Server Systems Factory Revenue, Second Quarter of 2014 (Revenues are in Millions)

Image credit: IDC

We should note that IBM Corp., is all set to lose its grip on the #2 spot in the list. That’s because it’s finally set to offload its x86 server division to Chinese firm Lenovo Group Ltd. Once that sale goes through, IBM’s server revenues will be significantly lower than the $2.972 billion in raked in over the last quarter.

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