Dell EMC pushed Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) off of its top server vendor spot (by data center server revenue) in the fourth quarter of 2017, according to IHS Markit. Meanwhile HPE fell from No. 1 to No. 3 on the list.

Dell EMC raked in 17.9 percent of data center server revenue, or $3.6 billion in sales, during the quarter. Meanwhile, white box followed closely behind with 17.6 percent of revenue market share ($3.54 billion), and HPE slipped to No. 3 (17.1 percent and $3.45 billion) in Q4.

IHS Markit attributes Dell EMC’s fourth-quarter revenue boost to its latest-generation servers, the PowerEdge 14th generation. Also during the quarter, Dell EMC moved its hyperconverged appliance portfolio onto new hardware, which the company said is specifically designed for hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI).

White box includes all vendors that produce rack server hardware with operating system software sold separately, such as Quanta Cloud Technology (QCT), Wistron, and Inventec.

For the second quarter in a row, white box ranked No. 1 in units shipped (24 percent) for data center servers.

Also once again, enterprises were the biggest buyers of data center servers shipped  — but they are buying less, which is in line with a decreasing long-term trend.

Enterprises bought 44 percent of these servers in Q4, and 48 percent during the entire year. They spent $40 billion on servers in 2017 and just over $10 billion in the fourth quarter.

By comparison, cloud service providers spent $17 billion (41 percent), and telecommunications companies spent $8 billion (15 percent) on data center servers in 2017.

IHS Markit still expects cloud service providers to overtake enterprises beginning in 2019, said Vlad Galabov, a senior analyst on the data center compute team.