In addition to all of the questions we ask about comparative hardware, software, and service offerings from the major x86 server vendors, we also ask our enterprise customers to gauge vendor innovation in general. Here we find out which vendor, in the minds of our survey respondents, has the greatest desire to drive x86 innovation. But when we ask who has the greatest ability to innovate, we learn that there are different answers to each question...

A major part of the 2010 GCG x86 Server Vendor Preference Survey is the Vendor Face-Off section. This is where we ask real-world data center personnel to rate the major vendors (Dell, HP, IBM, and Oracle) on a wide variety of technical, vendor support, and customer satisfaction criteria. In this set of survey results, we look at how our survey respondents rate and rank the leading vendors in terms of system performance...

In this set of survey results, we look at how our survey respondents rate and rank the leading vendors in terms of systems management and manageability. This is an important category, given that many customers are struggling with too many systems to manage while being perennially short on staff and financial resources. We asked customers which vendor provided the best systems management suite and which system brand offers the easiest and most efficient systems management...

Reliability, Availability Serviceability are among the most critical attributes of any system, and certainly something that every data center manager considers closely when making a server decision. With x86 servers, the system vendors are all working with mostly the same hardware, operating systems, and firmware. However, the way they put these pieces together – and what they wrap around the systems in terms of sophisticated software and advice – can make a big difference in delivered uptime. Here's how our survey respondents rated the major vendors' RAS capabilities...

In this section of our 2010 x86 Server Vendor Preference Survey, we look at “Fit Finish.” Our survey respondents rated the major vendors on delivery quality – ease of setup, hardware consistency, and all-around initial quality. Here are the results...