FRAMINGHAM, USA: Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posted year-over-year growth of -13.6per cent, totaling $4.2 billion in the first quarter of 2009 (1Q09), according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker.

For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market declined to $5.6 billion in revenues, an 18.2per cent decline from the prior year's first quarter, driven by continued weakness in server systems sales. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reached 2,146 petabytes, growing 14.8per cent year over year.

"The disk storage system vendors are really seeing the impact of the global economic downturn in the first quarter revenues," said Steve Scully, research manager, Enterprise Storage at IDC. "However, while total revenues declined year over year, the overall storage capacity shipped continued to grow. These contrasting results are due to a combination of currency implications, lower overall sales, shifts in product mix, and aggressive pricing actions."

“Although the economic crisis was fully realized by the enterprise storage systems market in the first quarter of 2009, the quarter wasn’t without its bright spots,” said Liz Conner, research analyst, Storage Systems. “Entry-level price bands ($0K - $14.99K) showed 9.9per cent year-over-year growth and the midrange price band ($15K – $49.99K) was flat year over year, supporting IDC’s belief that storage products are still in demand, with customer spending trending towards more modular, price point options. In addition, the high-end price band ($300K-499.99K) saw a 14.5per cent year-over-year growth as vendors discounted their very high-end products, shifting the ASV’s into lower price bands in order to meet the demand for high-end storage while accounting for reduced IT budgets.”

Total External Disk Storage Systems

EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 20.7per cent revenue share in the first quarter, followed by HP and IBM in a statistical tie for the second position with 11.5per cent and 11.3per cent revenue share, respectively. Dell and Hitachi finished the quarter in a statistical tie for fourth place with 9.8per cent and 9.4per cent revenue share respectively.

Network Disk Storage Systems

The total network disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open SAN) had year-over-year growth of -12.5per cent in the first quarter with more than $3.1 billion in revenues. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total network storage market with 26.0per cent revenue share, followed by NetApp with 12.0per cent revenue share.

In the Open SAN market, which declined 14.3per cent year over year, EMC lead with 21.9per cent revenue share. The NAS market declined 6.7per cent year over year, led by EMC with 39.0per cent revenue share and followed by NetApp with 28.7per cent share. The iSCSI SAN market continued to show strong momentum, posting 40.5per cent revenue growth compared to the prior year's quarter. Dell led the market with 36.4per cent revenue share, followed by EMC with 15.8per cent.

"Price sensitivity was a big factor in the healthy growth of iSCSI SAN, the only installation environment segment that ended the quarter in positive territory," added Natalya Yezhkova, research manager, IDC Storage Systems. "While still a relatively small segment of the market, iSCSI SAN is the bright spot for end users and for vendors, as it helps end users to deploy network storage, often with enterprise-class functionality, at a lower price point than traditional FC SAN, and, thus, creates more selling opportunities for vendors."