Surveying The Server Scene

Dell made gains while Hewlett Packard Enterprise saw steep year-over-year declines but retained its position atop the revenue mountain in the global server market in the second quarter, according to research firm Gartner.

Worldwide server revenue declined nearly 1 percent year over year in the second quarter, but shipments grew 2 percent over the same time as x86 servers continue to gain traction in the market, Gartner said.

Dell capitalized on the strength of the x86 market, moving into the top spot in server shipments for the quarter, displacing HPE. HPE, despite declines in both revenue and shipments, held its position as the top server vendor by revenue for the quarter. Cisco Systems' revenue results were flat year over year. IBM, which sold its x86 business to Lenovo in late 2014, claimed a 9 percent revenue market share.

Still, while the battle between Dell and HPE rages, Chinese manufacturers Lenovo, Huawei and Inspur made significant shipment gains in the quarter. Click through to see five key stats from Gartner's second-quarter worldwide server report.

Apple is breaking from tradition with the sale of its new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus phones in that it won't disclose first-weekend sales numbers.

In years past, Apple has proudly touted the number of sales during phone launches.

Last year, Apple sold 13 million new smartphones during the first three days the 6S and 6S Plus came to market.

In a statement, Apple said it is at a point where initial sales are governed by supply, not demand, so the numbers are no longer representative of the phones' popularity.

This week Dell partners got their first glimpse of the new channel program they can expect following the company's acquisition of EMC in a letter from the company.

Channel partners Wednesday get their first official look at the changes Dell Technologies is making to its partner program as it races to establish a new, integrated program by the beginning of its next fiscal year.

Details about the program began to emerge as soon as Dell completed its $58 billion acquisition of EMC last week. The changes were generally well received by partners, who said the company has done a good job of listening to the channel and taking action to ensure partners are treated fairly.

“Partners were concerned about the unknown, and we wanted to make an extremely clear statement that there will be no unknowns,” Marius Haas, Dell COO and president of commercial solutions, told CRN in an exclusive interview. "[We're telling partners that] the investments you made, the relationships you’ve established, we’re going to help you with those accounts to ensure business continuity for our customers, our partners and ourselves.”

[Related: CRN Exclusive: Dell Makes Ambulos North America Channel Chief, Assembles New Top Sales Teams]

A letter detailing immediate changes was sent to partners Wednesday.

Veritas Technologies on Tuesday went on the offensive against a wide range of storage competitors, from EMC to SimpliVity, saying those vendors stand in the way of the kind of digital transformation that customers need -- and some are already undertaking.

Veritas executives told customer and channel partner attendees at this week's Veritas Vision conference that the Mountain View, Calif.-based company is the only company that can help with that transition given that it is the only software-only storage vendor with the enterprise experience to do so.

The comments came after Veritas unveiled a new information platform it said would make it easy for customers to protect and manage their data with full compliance with company policies.

[Related: First Veritas Vision Confab Since 2004 Highlights New Info Management Platform, Red Hat Partnership]

Veritas executives were especially critical of Dell and EMC. Indeed, Veritas on Tuesday took out a full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal (see photo) with the headline, "There's a special place in Dell reserved for hardware."