IBM’s hardware division was its growth driver in the most recent financial quarter.

While overall sales grew 8% to $24.6 billion during the three months ending 31 March 2011, the Systems and Technology segment grew 19% to $4 billion. That was the division’s best first quarter growth in a decade.

The division’s growth was in turn spurred by increase mainframe revenues. IBM’s System z line of mainframe hardware grew revenue 41% during the quarter.

Revenues from some of the company’s more modern technologies were also fast growing – the cloud division grew five fold, while the business analytics segment increased revenues by 20% – but the company did not reveal what those revenues were.

In a conference call with investment analysts, IBM’s chief financial officer Mark Loughridge said the company won 2010 "competitive displacements" during the quarter. "Roughly 60% of these wins came from Oracle’s legacy Sun installed accounts," he said.