On the heels of Intel ’s Purley launch, the OEM community quickly announced the availability of their respective product portfolios. For the most part, these announcements were about what one would expect with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) focusing on its engineering prowess, Dell EMC promoting the strength of the merged company and products, and Cisco Systems continuing to drive UCS. And every OEM made a compelling case of driving messaging that resonated with the market, from security to performance to TCO.
One of the more interesting product launches came from Lenovo . Launching its revamped product portfolio with a renewed focus, Lenovo’s message was tailored for the datacenter audience: Simplify the portfolio and deliver world class products supported by an organization loaded with server experience. Before delving into Lenovo’s renewed focus, let’s set some context. When Lenovo purchased IBM’s Intel -based x86 server lineup in 2014, it was expected that Lenovo’s market share would quickly grow to 10%. But given market dynamics, regulatory and other challenges, Lenovo has not seen this success. In fact, per IDC’s quarterly tracker, Lenovo exited 2016 with 6.5% market share, down about a percentage point from 2015 (7.4%).
Given these dynamics, Lenovo appears to have to gone back to the basics. The result was what felt like a new Lenovo launching a new product portfolio a few weeks back. My takeaway from the launch event is that Lenovo wants to do three things:
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- Build great products
- Simplify the buyer’s journey
- Stay maniacally focused
Lenovo’s focus on reducing the product mix and positioning by market segments, use cases, and workloads should make it easier for that IT Manager of a 20-server shop to find, learn about and purchase her new database server. Conversely, an enterprise IT Director looking to deploy SAPHANA can quickly and easily find the resources and content that leads them to the appropriate Lenovo server platform. Whether Lenovo can drive that simplicity through their established channels is the real question.
3. Stay Maniacally Focused
Interestingly enough, one of the more interesting elements of the Lenovo launch had nothing to do with the product. The time spent demonstrating a renewed commitment to the server market was perhaps what the market most wanted to hear. Those who have been in the server business know the hit that Lenovo has taken around the marketing, selling and support of their server products. The message from Lenovo’s Kirk Skaugen was simple: This is a new Lenovo, not just in product, not just in marketing, but organizationally.
We will better know how successful Lenovo’s strategy has been as we watch its revenue and market share over the next few quarters. And how much penetration of North America it can achieve. Some of the early beacons of success will be key wins and additional ThinkAgile reference architectures as this signal confidence from the ecosystem.
But for now? It looks like a new Lenovo has entered the server market.