NAS, EVA let HP down, Dell/EMC brand fails to click

MUMBAI, INDIA: EMC, Fujitsu and NetApp are the only top-tier vendors that were able to grow more than the external controller based (ECB) disk storage market in year-over-year revenue growth, with each gaining market share, says Gartner. 

HP's market share loss was due to its anemic position in the fast-growing NAS segment coupled with ongoing EVA year-over-year revenue declines. Moreover, Despite a 47.9 percent year-over-year revenue gain with its EqualLogic PS-series, Dell did not improve its market share position because of continued declines in Dell/EMC co-branded products.

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While essentially holding its position in the modular ECB segment Oracle's market share decline was due to the discontinuance of the reseller relationship with HDS for the high-end monolithic frame-based 9000 series.

While EMC and Fujitsu produced year-over-year revenue gains in the third quarter of 2010, the monolithic frame-based disk storage market declined to 24.5 percent of the total ECB disk storage market.

Table 1

Worldwide External Controller-Based Disk Storage Vendor Revenue Estimates for 3Q10 (Millions of U.S. Dollars).

Note1 EMC revenue excludes OEM revenue from Dell and Fujitsu Technology Solutions.

Note2 Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems revenue excludes OEM revenue from HP, Sun and Oracle.

Note 3: NetApp revenue excludes OEM revenue from IBM

Source: Gartner (December 2010)

Gaining 2.8 percentage points in market share, NetApp's storage efficiency message is resonating with end-users faced with budget and data centre space constraints. EMC's broad-based ECB disk storage portfolio supports its market share gains, with V-Max continuing to produce strong year-over-year revenue results.

Even though the IBM XIV Storage System attained a 112 percent year-over-year increase in the third quarter of 2010, IBM's spotty performance with its DS-series resulted in a modest decline in market share.

Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems third quarter results remained constrained due to the transition from the older USP-V and USP-VM systems to the just released VSP high-end monolithic frame-based disk array system.

Fujitsu's strength stemmed from robust sales of the high-end Eternus DX8000 series in Japan.

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Global ECB disk storage revenue grows 16 percent in 3Q10

Worldwide external controller-based (ECB) disk storage revenue reached $4.6 billion in the third quarter of 2010, up 16 percent from nearly $4 billion in the third quarter of 2009, according to Gartner Inc.

While the ECB disk storage market declined in 2009, these 2010 results are also an increase from 2008. Third quarter 2010 worldwide ECB disk storage revenue was up 8.4 percent over the third quarter of 2008 revenue of $4.3 billion.

Except for the EMEA region, which is suffering significant economic woes, the other major geographic regions grew by double-digits year-over-year. The Latin America market grew 43.4 percent, Asia/Pacific increased 22.2 percent, Japan was up 18 percent, and North America grew 17.2 percent.

Terabytes shipped in the third quarter of 2010 increased 60.4 percent over the third quarter of 2009, while price per terabyte decreased 28 percent.

"In spite of an erratic global economy, and even though IT budgets remain tight, IT executives continue to invest in ECB disk storage to support projects that yield economic efficiencies," said Roger Cox, research vice president at Gartner.

"Significant investment examples include shared ECB disk storage support for virtualized server and desktop deployments, disk-based backup and recovery modernization initiatives, as well as new disk-based active archiving projects. General-purpose ECB disk storage infrastructures are also being refreshed to take advantage of new technologies that simplify storage management, reduce operational costs, improve utilization and satisfy expanding service level agreements (SLAs)," he added.