Signs of stability in disk storage market
Signs of stability in disk storage market
After a steep decline in the year-on-year worldwide disk storage systems revenue in Q4 of last year, figures released by analyst group IDG on the revenue generated in the same market in Q1 of this year suggest that the disk storage market is stabilising.
Worldwide disk storage systems factory revenue was $4.8 billion in the first quarter of 2003, down 1% compared with first quarter of 2002, according to IDC’s Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker. This slight year-over-year decline was less than the 8% year-over-year decline that was shown in the fourth quarter of 2002, indicating a continued trend toward stabilization in overall market spending.
The overall market was buoyed by strong sales in the Open SAN (Storage Area Network) market, which grew nearly 14% year-over-year in terms of factory revenues. Meanwhile, overall storage capacity continues to outpace revenue, growing nearly 49% year-over-year to 175.6 petabytes shipped during the first quarter.
"First quarter results continue to illustrate increased customer adoption of network storage systems (NAS and Open SAN)," said Charlotte Rancourt, research director of IDC’s Disk Storage Systems program. "Network storage for the first time represents more than half (53% revenue share) of the total external disk storage systems market, up 5 points from a year ago. The traditional direct-attached storage systems represents 42% of total external disk storage revenue in the first quarter, down from 46% a year ago."
In the first quarter, HP led the total disk storage system market, with 26.3% revenue share, followed by IBM and EMC with 19.1% and 11.7% revenue share, respectively. Dell and IBM posted the strongest year-over-year growth during the first quarter among the top 5 vendors, with 37.5% and 16.8% respectively.
In the total external disk storage system market, revenue decreased 2.7% year-over-year in the first quarter. HP maintained its number 1 position with 19.5% revenue share. EMC was number 2 with 17.4% revenue share. EMC and HP switch positions in the total external RAID market, where EMC led the market with 19.2% revenue share and HP followed closely with 18% revenue share.
"HP has executed extremely well against the storage roadmap we articulated to the marketplace just over one year ago," said Bob Schultz, vice president and general manager, HP Network Storage Solutions. "Our sustained market leadership is a critical proof point that we're delivering on our promises and helping customers build the storage foundation of an adaptive enterprise."
EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total network storage market (NAS combined with Open SAN) with 26.3% revenue share. In the Open SAN market, HP led with 27.9% revenue share followed by EMC with 24.5% share.
In the NAS market, Network Appliance maintained its number 1 position with 37.3% share followed behind by EMC with 33.7% share.
"The IDC market share report reaffirms our commitment to deliver the highest-performing, most cost-effective solutions in the NAS and worldwide disk storage systems market spaces," said Mark Santora, senior vice president of marketing at Network Appliance. "Our vision continues to be based on delivering solutions that meet current and future customer needs in the enterprise storage space."
"Once again, SAN attached arrays accounted for an increasing portion of the storage systems market in the first quarter," said Eric Sheppard, senior analyst of IDC’s Disk Storage System Program. "This growth can be attributed to the strong end-user demand for solutions that enable efficient use of storage resources."
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