ARM Servers Are Coming, But Won't Be Cheap

Right however ARM chips aren't found much outside of phones and tablets, even though they're doing very nicely in that regard. They power the vast majority of mobile devices around the world, and have done so for some years. ARM doesn't make chips itself now instead licenses the design to manufacturers like Samsung, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm.

The software

Then there's the software. Microsoft is in the process of porting its Windows architecture over to ARM chips, however that seems to be more about bringing Windows to mobile devices than elevating ARM to the same status as the x86 platform. Dell has as well gone on record saying the software ecosystem for ARM is weak and that porting software could be expensive, leading to organizations maintaining two separate software stacks: one for x86, and one for ARM. That won't be cheap.

Additionally, we'd have to see big names like Red Hat and Novell fully supporting ARM earlier many companies would be willing to make the leap to the different architecture. Yes, there are ARM ports of some distros nevertheless businesses will need full support contracts in place.