Executive Summary

Intel’s Itanium processor is built on a unique architecture (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing or EPIC) that hosts a wide range of business and high-performance computing (HPC) applications. This architecture originated in the early 1990s and was further developed until it reached production in 2001. As a new architecture with a new instruction set, it required a new software development environment to take advantage of its design for highly parallel data operations on chip. Typically, it takes many years to create and develop a full portfolio of software tools needed to support a new hardware platform. But all the major toolsets and compilers are already in place for programmers to leverage for Itanium-based servers. The status and the maturity of this environment are important both for independent software vendors (ISVs) using off-the-shelf software for the broad marketplace and for IT organizations’ programmers and developers working on custom applications, because the environment supports improved application development and more rapid deployment of new workloads than was previously possible.

IDC’s customer-based, demand-side research on server workloads conducted over the past two years shows that Itanium-based servers are used broadly across the full spectrum of application types. To better understand the maturity of the Itanium platform in the marketplace, IDC has focused on the application development workload because it is a key component in the adoption and usage of new technology. IDC supply-side research shows that application development workloads now represent more than 11% of workloads run on Itanium-based servers, allowing the inventory of custom and off-the-shelf packaged software to grow beyond the 13,000 applications already available on Itanium-based servers.

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