The increasing need for real-time analytics has helped buoy server sales to enterprises in a weak global economy, but most of the growth during the third quarter came from Web giants that are building their own hardware.

Uncertainty about the economy and budgetary caution have hung over the server market for a few years and so far, this year hasn’t been easy for the big server vendors. Server shipments grew year over year by just 1 percent and revenue by 1.7 percent in the third quarter, according to a survey by market research company Gartner released Wednesday.

Most of the growth in the third quarter came from demand by Web giants Google, Facebook and Microsoft in the U.S. and the likes of Tencent and Alibaba in China, according to Errol Rasit, research director at Gartner.

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