Microserver is a low power, lightweight, and low cost server. This again includes system-on-chip (SoC) systems comprising of many small single socket servers that share a chassis, power supplies, fans, and a common interconnect for achieving better flexibility, higher density and efficiency. The total value for global market microserver stood at USD 1,059.69 million in 2012 and it is estimated that the market would reach a size of USD 30,205.56 million by 2019. It is estimated that the market would experience growth at a CAGR of 43.4% in terms of revenue during the period from 2013 to 2019. Further, it has been estimated that a total of 2,137.92 thousand units of microserver would be shipped in 2019. The growth in demand for microservers is driven by the growing demand for power efficient, high density and low cost server ecosystems around data center and cloud. Microservers also offer better overall cost-performance, higher reliability in system-on-chip (SoC)-based implementations and overall reduction in total cost of ownership due to better self-management and are expected to define future around data center and cloud. It is expected that total cloud traffic would grow at a CAGR of 29.9% over the period 2013 to 2019 and it is expected to drive the growth in adoption of microservers. In addition, growing clout for microservers among dedicated, single application, high-scale customers for very low power server designs is expected to boost the demand in coming future as these have the required expertise and willingness to rewrite old software that run on legacy software and optimize it for microservers.

Microservers are optimized for workload such as static simple content delivery node, web servers, distributed memory caching, cold data storage; entry dedicated hosting and entry level security appliances and switches. It is expected that microserver market would grow over the coming years owing to the fact that end-users can utilize this technology to deploy systems that offer better cost-performance at lower total cost of ownership. End-users would also benefit from its reliability, reduced power and space requirements, and low cost of entry offered by microserver platforms.

Intel processor based microservers were dominating the market landscape in 2012, however; with several players foraying into this space with processor licensed from ARM, the competition in market is going to be intense. In 2014, multiple players with 64-bit SoC-based processor, designed for microserver and often offering sub-10W thermal design power (TDP) are expected to change the scenario. Microservers find application in data center and cloud environments and with lowering the power and space consumption becoming a priority with operators, the microservers are expected to see increased demand. Microserver market in terms of revenue around cloud is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 62.0% from 2013 to 2019, owing to fact that cloud is growing at a higher rate as compared to traditional data centers.

Initial customers of these low power servers were the small and medium-size enterprises with their combined market share for microserver in 2012 being 82.6% as compared to 17.4% for large-size enterprises. However, this scenario is expected to change significantly with several hyperscale customers showing interest in SoC-based microservers. Asia Pacific is estimated to be the fastest growing region over the forecast period from 2013 to 2019. Replacing existing infrastructure with a microserver is still a concern with small-size data center operators as this has to make sense economically, however; this is not the case with new infrastructure for data center and cloud coming up during the forecast period. The infrastructure for data center and cloud is expected to grow faster in Asia Pacific and Europe and thus expecting better growth in small and medium size business segment in Asia Pacific and Europe as compared to North America for microserver is justified.

Some of the major vendors in this market include Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), Dell Inc, Quanta Computer Inc., Penguin Computing and Acer Inc among others. HP emerged as a leader in 2012 followed by Dell, with their very low power server sales, however; it is seen that the real market would come alive in 2014 with multiple vendors foraying into market offering servers with multicore, 64-bit processors from different ARM licensees and Intel.