The emergence of the hyperscale data center has changed the business model for server makers, according to a new analysis by the Gartner Group, which outlines how the original design manufacturer (ODM) had adapted to the new paymasters of the market.

The market analyst has forecast that sales of servers by ODMs directly to customers will now account for 16% of global x86 server shipments by 2018, amounting to US$4.6bn in revenue.

This, according to Gartner, is evidence that ODM companies are rapidly changing their business model in order to directly target hyperscale data center customers.

Gartner research director Naveen Mishra said server makers are now basing their short term design and manufacturing decisions on the needs of data centers.

Though direct sales to customers only make up 16% of the total market for their servers, ODMs are likely to be influenced by their input because they are the fastest growing sector and, being bulk buyers, they are easier to engage with directly.

Which means that hyperscale data centers, despite being minority customers in the overall server market, are the most influential customers over the direction of product designs, according to Mishra.

Gartner has estimated that the hyperscale segment will contribute 82% of the revenue from direct sales of ODM servers to customers in 2014.

"Direct engagement with hyperscale data centers is the biggest contributor to ODM growth,” Mishra said.

“These customers are willing to consider innovative data center infrastructure designs that offer better scalability and can drastically reduce the total cost of ownership of servers - including power and cooling expense - compared with mainstream servers offered by traditional server OEMs."

Hyperscale data centers reject mainstream OEM servers in favor of ODM-supplied servers because hardware is a commodity in the increasingly software defined data center, Mishra said.

“ODMs are chosen for their lower cost and because of the willingness of the vendors to innovate and create design efficiencies at the behest of a customer base that is highly skilled,” Mishra said.

"ODMs have strong credentials of technical knowledge and capabilities in designing customized server solutions for varying customer needs.”

OpenStack will further disrupt the ODM server market, he predicted.

“Open stack storage solutions are slowly gaining traction with ODMs, which can disrupt the established external controller-based storage vendors," said Mishra.

The report, Market Trends: Data Center Infrastructure ODMs Are the Key Threat to DC OEMs Direct Business, said the enterprise market might be the next major influence on server design, but that in the short term hyperscale data centers will shape ODM server direction.