A new report from IDC has revealed encouraging growth in
the worldwide external disk storage systems in the third quarter
(Q3) 2006.
The market analyst found that factory revenues grew 9.9% from
the same period a year ago to $4.3bn, marking 14 consecutive
quarters of year-on-year growth. In addition, the total disk
storage systems market grew to $6.2bn, up 7.9% from Q3 2005. For
the first time, total disk storage systems capacity shipped 783
petabytes, growing 50.2% from the same quarter a year ago.
“There was a marked increase in average size and selling price
for disk storage systems in the third quarter, particularly for
systems selling between $50,000 and $300,000,” reveals Brad Nisbet,
programme manager with IDC’s storage systems programme.
“IDC believes these larger systems are being fuelled by a
variety of drivers, including the consolidation that results from
increased server virtualisation, branch office consolidation, and a
new wave of organisations looking to store vast amounts of fixed
content.”
In terms of vendor rankings for external disk storage systems in
the third quarter, EMC gained market leadership with a 21.4%
revenue share; followed by HP with 17.6%. IBM was in third place
with 13.7%; Dell and Hitachi were neck-and-neck for fifth place
with 8.0% and 7.9% revenue share, respectively. Of the top five
vendors, only EMC and IBM exhibited double-digit year-on-year
growth.
For the total network disk storage market (NAS Combined with
Open SAN), IDC found that the market posted 17.2% year-on-year
growth in the first quarter to more than $3.0bn. EMC maintained
leadership in the total network storage market with 27.1% revenue
share, followed by HP and IBM with 17.9% and 12.5% revenue share,
respectively.
In the Open SAN market, which grew 17.3% year-over-year, EMC
regained the number-one position with 24.4% revenue share, followed
by HP with 21.0%. The NAS market grew 16.7% year-over-year, led by
EMC with 38.1% revenue share and followed by Network Appliance with
30.2% share.
IDC reported that the iSCSI SAN market continues to show strong
momentum, posting 108.4% revenue growth compared with the prior
year’s quarter. Network Appliance continues to lead the market with
21.5% share, followed by EMC with 16.9% share.