This IDC study presents IDC's current taxonomy for the server, storage, peripherals, clients, and network infrastructure markets and should serve as a guide for the existing base of hardware research and the planned base of IDC hardware and network infrastructure research for 2007. This study also explains IDC's methodology and segmentation and defines the scope and applicability of each segment. Key questions answered include the following:

• What market segments are covered within servers, storage, peripherals, clients, and networking equipment?
• What equipment areas does IDC forecast within these market segments?
• How does IDC define each of the major hardware technology markets?

"This study compiles in one document IDC's taxonomy for enterprise IT hardware and network infrastructure markets. The taxonomy includes servers, storage, peripherals, clients, and networking equipment and serves as the base for IDC's research for 2007 and 2008." — Crawford Del Prete, senior vice president, Communications, Hardware, Services, and Software research