Whilst the PC market has been through a difficult period in terms of growth, one area that has managed to buck the trend has been in the workstation market. Indeed, a recent study by Future Market Insights has portrayed a market that is flourishing and set for continued growth at a CAGR of 4.3% in terms of volume and a CAGR of 9.8% in terms of value during the forecast period of 2016 to 2026. There are a number of product segments for workstations (tower workstation, mobile workstation, blade workstation, rack workstation, and all-in-one) and perhaps not surprisingly a growing range of applications. Traditionally, thought of as the province for computer aided design, scientific and technical areas requiring number crunching analysis, there is growing interest in 3D animation software, digital content creation, video editing, virtual and augmented reality, gaming, and graphics. In line with increasing applications, there is more scope across a number of vertical markets in both industry, commerce and the public sector. Even some office power users could find an entry level workstation with its small form factor, a smart investment as systems can be tailored to suit most budgets.

FMI maintains that the workstation market is likely to witness several big trends in the next 10 years including migration of PC and Apple Mac users to workstations, an increase in the global demand for virtual workstations, a rising preference for mobile workstations in oil and gas exploration applications, a growing demand for tower workstations in digital content creation applications, and a high demand for mobile workstations in software engineering applications. Diversifying applications beyond engineering and into the field of digital content creation (DDC) opens up new revenue opportunities for the channel.

Features such as powerful CPUs, faster graphics processors and added memory are meeting the demands for high performance, lower redundancy, increased productivity and reliability for heavy workloads. Vendors operating in this market are expected to target and innovate in features such as mobile screen size and the type of processors that can offer speed and reliability.

Advantages over traditional PCs.

Jon Peddie, President of Jon Peddie Research, leading analysts in the workstation sector concurs with the market opportunity: “With a solid nine percent growth in 2016, and an annual growth rate of five percent for the past five years, the workstation market is thriving. Workstations like Fujitsu’s CELSIUS series can have almost 70x the performance of those we used in 1995. The need for that kind of performance is primarily driven by the increasing use of 3D animation, digital content creation, multi-screen scenarios and advanced networking and graphics. We’re seeing a significant boost in performance to deliver these immersive experiences, alongside a reduction in size, and Fujitsu is a technology leader in the field.”

Workstations have several advantages over the PC. They can support one or more professional grade graphics cards ensuring faster rendering for complex graphics. They can be configured with more powerful processors for demanding applications such as CAD, animation and DCC. They provide additional memory capacity with large hard drives designed to support terabytes of internal storage. For end-users workstations have the additional benefit of longer product lifecycles and despite a higher initial outlay, an improved ROI from traditional PCs.

Companies such as Dell EMC, Fujitsu, and Lenovo are amongst the leaders in this market and will continue to stay ahead of the curve with an impressive product portfolio that spans the workstation product segments. Exertis is well placed to help resellers take advantage of this growing market. For help and advice, please contact your account manager.

Sources and Acknowledgements: Intel, Jon Peddie Research, FMI,