The UK and Ireland were System i sales hot spots in the second quarter of this year, according to analyst IDC.

According to IDC's EMEA Quarterly Server Tracker, System i revenues grew by 26% year-on-year, grabbing 3% of the total revenue share for the UK and Ireland at $19.7m, while actual System i shipments grew by 32% over the same period. System i figures for the EMEA region as a whole were respectable, given the platform’s downward trend in sales over recent years. System i revenue across EMEA declined by 8.6% compared to the same quarter last year which also equated to a 3% revenue share of the total server market and $124 million in factory revenue.

This is perhaps not surprising as IBM had been cutting the price of its trusty midrange servers and, in fact, IDC says that actual shipment levels for System i were on par with the corresponding quarter of 2006.

The EMEA server market as a whole continued to enjoy strong demand in 2Q07, says IDC, with the fourth consecutive quarter of factory revenue growth. Sales reached more than $4 billion for the second quarter in a row, up 6% year on year. More than 600,000 servers were shipped in EMEA, an increase of 8% over the same period in 2006. Three-quarters of these servers were shipped in Western Europe.

"IT managers continue to invest in consolidating their infrastructure, using virtualisation to improve IT services management and business management, while considering issues of energy efficiency and green computing," said Nathaniel Martinez, programme manager for European Enterprise Servers at IDC.

"Renewed corporate interest in virtualised environments running on more richly configured x86 servers resulted in this segment generating 50% of the factory revenue for the first time in EMEA, with Windows and Linux-based servers stealing market share from Unix."

Sales of Windows servers increased 14% annually while waiting for the full impact of the Longhorn launch. Linux-based systems saw revenue grow by 34% to more than $600 million. Unix systems declined slightly but blade servers performed well, reaching sales of $300 million for the first time, up 12% year on year.

HP was the leading vendor after growing its revenue 11% annually thanks to a strong performance across the ProLiant and Integrity lines, increasing its market share one percentage point. IBM, a very close second in the vendor rankings saw its revenue grow 5% over the same period last year. Notably, the System x server range performed well, generating more than $400 million.

Seamus Quinn