Worldwide server sales reached their highest levels in three years in the 4th quarter of 2010, increasing 15.3% year-over-year, according to an industry report by IDC. The report recorded $15 billion in sales revenue in the quarter on shipments of 2.1 million units. International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM) held on to the No. 1 position in the server market with 37.4% of total share, while Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ) was No. 2 with 29.9%, followed by Dell Inc (NASDAQ:DELL), with 12.6%. The momentum in server sales has been primarily due to businesses making upgrades after delaying or cutting back on information technology purchases during, and immediately following the downturn. IDC analyst Jed Scaramella said in a phone interview, "It was a very positive end of the year for the server market, We’re calling 2010 the year of recovery." The technology market is also benefiting from the push toward cloud computing and virtualization, seen as essential to lowering a company's IT costs, in which businesses can utilize computing power through a network instead of through in-house data centers, and can tap disparate computer systems on their network premises or in hosted data centers, using computing capacity as it is needed.