HPC Market Update: Industry Growth to Fall Short in 2011

by Christopher G. Willard, Ph.D., Addison Snell, Laura Segervall
for Intersect360 Research
December 2011

 

 

Intersect360 Research expects the HPC industry to fall short of the total year-over-year 9.4% growth forecasted earlier this year. A complete 2011 total market model and new five-year forecast will be published in the first half of 2012, pending final analysis of year-end numbers.

The projected shortfall in growth is due to two factors:

• Eurozone crisis. Poor macroeconomic conditions in Europe will contribute to a slowdown on spending in the region, particularly in High Performance Technical Computing (HPTC) applications in the government and academic sectors. Recent survey data on projected spending supports this assumption.
• Thailand flooding causing disk drive shortages. Storage is the third-largest product spending category and has the highest five-year forecast compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Severe flooding in Thailand has disrupted disk production, causing temporary product shortages and a short-term spike in prices, which will cause a shift in some product revenue from 2011 to 2012.

The information in this report is preliminary guidance pending a full yearend analysis. Intersect360 Research is not changing its five-year CAGR for the total HPC industry at this time. We will perform a full analysis of 2011 revenues and budget expectations to publish an updated five-year forecast in the first half of 2012.