For Taiwan-based makers of servers for direct sale to clients, there has been a reshuffle of orders for servers used in cloud computing data centers from Microsoft, Facebook and Google in 2017, according to Taiwan-based server supply chain makers.
Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Amazon together account for 90% of global demand for direct-sale servers and the reshuffle is related to Intel's planned launch of server CPU platform Purley in 2017, the sources said.
Microsoft has unveiled server models developed through cooperation with Open Compute Project under Project Olympus, Microsoft's next-generation hyperscale cloud computing hardware design and a new model for open source hardware development, the sources noted.
Project Olympus' hardware partners are Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Taiwan-based ODM Wistron's wholly owned subsidiary Wiwynn, the sources indicated. In addition, HPE's server OEM is Taiwan-based Foxconn Electronics.
Facebook originally procured servers mainly from Quanta Computer but has shifted part of its orders to Wiwynn.
While Inventec is currently the main supplier of servers for Google, Quanta has been actively competing for orders from Google and has expanded server production capacities in North America and Europe.
