External Disk Market Still Growing Strong
External Disk Market Still Growing Strong
September 10, 2007: According to the analysts at IDC, the external disk storage system market continued its solid expansion during Q2 this year, with systems factory revenues growing by 6.2 percent compared to the same time last year, hitting US$4.3B (AU$5.24B) and marking the 18th consecutive quarter of year-on-year growth.
The firm says that according to its worldwide storage tracker, the total disk storage systems market grew to US$6.1B (AU$7.43B), up 5.9 percent last year and marking a growth of 50.1 percent capacity shipped, which translates to 1.2 exabytes.
According to IDC program manager Brad Nisbet, this illustrates that the lull in high-end spending that appeared during Q1 in 2007 has continued, particularly when it comes to external storage systems selling over $300,000.
“2006 proved to be an impressive year of spending among large organisations looking to achieve data center consolidation, especially in the U.S.,” said Nisbet, adding that disk storage systems vendors with a diversified portfolio of products and broad bases of customers will be best positioned to overcome random spending patterns.
Overall, IDC found that EMC has maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with a 21.4 percent revenue share, followed by HP and IBM in a statistical tie for the number 2 spot with 14.4 percent and 13.6 percent respectively.
Dell and Hitachi rounded out the top 5 with 9.4 percent and 8.1 percent respectively, but out of the top 5, Dell was top dog for YOY revenue growth, notching up 23.8 percent during Q2.
When it comes to network disk storage systems, IDC found that the total market (NAS and Open SAN) grew by a healthy 12.8 percent YOY during Q2 to reach US$3.1B (AU$3.78). EMC continued to dominate here with a 26.9 percent revenue share, followed by HP and IBM with 14.7 percent and 12.1 percent respectively.
IDC also noted that the iSCSI SAN market has continued to display strong momentum, posting a 57.2 percent growth in revenue YOY, reaching US$191 million (AU$263) in the second quarter. Here Network Appliance has maintained its leading 21.3 percent share, with EMC following relatively closely with 16.8 percent.
“Despite some weakness in high-end systems selling over $300,000, Open SAN systems (including Fibre Channel and iSCSI SAN) are showing signs of growth in lower price bands,” said Liz Conner, a research analyst at IDC Storage Systems. “Vendors continue to invest in bringing networked storage to SMBs and smaller enterprise customers. Although this opportunity is still unfolding, we are seeing a variety of technology options begin to resonate with customers in this segment.”
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