There seems to be some confusion lingering about who really is number one in servers. In an interview with John Furrier at Hadoop Summit 2014, Cisco’s Raghu Nambiar and Todd Brannon went on the record saying Cisco was number one in servers in North America. To shed some light on this claim, Jim Ganthier, VP of Global Marketing for HP Servers, sat down with Furrier and Dave Vellante at HP Discover 2014 to uncover the truth behind these International Data Corporation (IDC) numbers.

Ganthier said that Cisco’s claim is not 100 percent accurate because one of the outputs was due to people breaking up markets so small that Cisco was the only one left. Mentioning the fact that he tends to look at things at a global level, Ganthier explained that Cisco’s global share is in the single digits. Not specifying what that single digit is, he told Furrier and Vellante, “When I say single digits, you can pick your favorite number, either three percent or six percent.” Ganthier added the fact that Cisco’s claim is based on a single market and platform on a single metric.

Average Selling Prices

Ganthier also mentioned that the claim was revenue only. He went on to say that someone should really go back and check on the way calculations are being done for average selling prices to ensure that the data is really reflective of what’s going on at a global level.

“I don’t know about you gentlemen, but if I were going to buy something that people would see as perhaps the technical equivalent, being charged 40 percent more for it probably wouldn’t make me feel really good,” Ganthier said.

Vellante added that, in a recent channel survey he conducted in which he mainly spoke with storage resellers, he was told that if the price is not essentially five to eight percent of each competitor, they won’t sell it. However, to break down Ganthier’s statement on Cisco’s extra 40 percent charge, Vellante offered an example of what he’s noticed happens a lot in the market. Someone will install a Unified Computing System (UCS) and, maybe three or four months later, a NetApp box will go in. That will then be called a FlexPod or converged infrastructure. The revenue for this seems like it’s going into the numbers, which Vellante believes may be why there’s a 40 percent premium.

HP is Number One

Though there were no specific numbers mentioned, Ganthier claims that HP is the number one server seller worldwide in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and in Asia-Pacific-Japan (APJ). This is also based on multiple items, consisting of mostly units and then almost all of the revenue as well. “For us, it’s not just looking at it with a singular optic. It truly is a global business with global results,” said Ganthier.

See his entire discussion below, where he also discusses HP’s new Apollo line, amongst other new product announcements and highlights from Discover.