(NOTE: This story was originally posted to CRN.com March 9.)

Two Key Vendors Gain; Two Others Fall

Want to know how to squeeze a bit more revenue out of servers?

The server market saw growth among hyper-scale users while struggling with traditional enterprise customers looking to virtualization and cloud services in the fourth quarter of 2016, according to Gartner. Meanwhile, the market drew a clear line between winners and losers, the research firm said.

While Dell EMC and Huawei made gains, perennial server market powerhouse Hewlett Packard Enterprise and China-based PC giant Lenovo suffered steep declines in revenue and shipments as 2016 drew to a close. HPE's declines meant that Dell EMC closed in on the market leader in fourth-quarter server revenue and put distance between itself and second-place HPE in units shipped.

A flat market means hardware vendors have to fight for scraps of share. Hyper-converged systems have given the x86 server market a boost, but hyper-converged systems make up only a small part of the overall infrastructure hardware market, Gartner noted.

Gartner predicts that the server market will see modest growth this year, driven by service provider build-outs while purchasing among enterprises slows. Click through to read eight "must know" things about the market.