Networking giant Cisco today said its market share in the x86 blade server market in India doubled to 12 per cent in the January-March period of 2012 on the back of strong demand for its Unified Computing System (UCS).

A blade server (x86 server and non x86 server) is a compact, low power-consuming computer board containing processor and memory deployed at data centres, which helps organisations cut costs.

Cisco's market share in the fourth quarter of 2011 in x86 blade server market in India was approximately 6 per cent and in Q1 2012. It jumped up to 12 per cent, Cisco Senior Vice-President (Data Centre, Virtualisation and Cloud Business), Rajesh Rege, told PTI.

Cisco forayed into the blade server space about two years back with UCS, a platform based on x86 blade server and unites computing, networking, storage access and virtualisation into a cohesive system.

"India is one of the fastest growing markets for Cisco UCS. Our market share has had a good bump up. This means relevance of Cisco and Cisco's technology for the India market remains strong. UCS, which was launched about 24 months back, has been consistently acquiring new customers and gaining market share," he added.

X86 blade server segment is estimated to be about 150 million in 2011, Rege said.

According to estimates, globally more than 85 per cent of all blade revenue is driven by x86-based blades. The company has more than 500 customers of the solution in India, of which 125 customers were added in the last six months. ESSAR, KPIT Cummins, Netmagic, Geometric, HCL and Wipro are some of the Cisco's customers in India.