Sales of external controller-based (ECB) disk storage plummeted
by almost 16% in the second quarter of 2009 due to the downturn
impacting enterprise IT projects, according to analyst Gartner.
"The year-on-year double-digit decline of 15.7% primarily
resulted from the economic downturn and longer sales cycles," said
Donna Taylor, principal research analyst for Gartner's global
Storage Quarterly Statistics programme.
EMC maintained its No.1 position with 23.7% revenue market
share. IBM was placed second with 15.7%, and Hewlett-Packard came
in third with 10.3% of the market. Dell was fourth with 9.2%,
followed by Hitachi/HDS with 8.7%t. NetApp and Sun Microsystems
placed sixth and seventh, respectively, with 8.5% and 4.5% market
share.
Taylor said: "A bright spot in the disk array market has been in
Network Attached Storage, which experienced a 3.5% year-on-year
growth rate in the second quarter of 2009."
EMC recently boosted its virtualisation strategy with the
acquisition of FastScale, which focuses on cloud-based
infrastructure.