EMC outperforms in disk storage market

FRAMINGHAM, USA: Global external disk storage systems factory revenues posted year-over-year growth of 10.8 per cent, totaling just under $5.8 billion, in the third quarter of 2011 (3Q11), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker.

For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market grew to $7.6 billion in revenues, representing 8.5 per cent growth from the prior year's third quarter. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reach 5,429 petabytes, growing 30.7 per cent year-over-year.

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"The third quarter of 2011 was a strong quarter for Enterprise Storage, posting solid growth in factory revenue and signaling a return to 'business as normal'," said Liz Conner, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. "The trend of increased spending during the economic recovery period, specifically on high-end systems, has started to draw to a close. As IDC predicted, year-over-year growth has started to slow and is now approaching pre-economic crisis levels."

Total External Disk Storage Systems

EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 28.6 per cent revenue share in the third quarter, followed by IBM and NetApp tied for second with 12.7 per cent and 12.1 per cent market share respectively.

HP ended the quarter in fourth position, with 11.3 per cent. Hitachi and Dell finished in a tie for fifth with 8.8 per cent and 8.0 per cent market share respectively.

Open Networked Disk Storage Systems

The total open networked disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open / iSCSI SAN) grew 12.3 per cent year-over-year in the third quarter to just shy of $4.9 billion in revenues. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total open networked storage market with 31.3 per cent revenue share, followed by NetApp with a 14.4 per cent revenue share.

In the Open SAN market, which grew 16.1 per cent year-over-year, EMC was the leading vendor with 25.3 per cent revenue share, followed by IBM in second and HP in third with 15.4 per cent and 14.0 per cent share, respectively.

The NAS market grew 3.5 per cent year-over-year, led by EMC with 46.7 per cent revenue share and followed by NetApp with 30.9 per cent share. The iSCSI SAN market continues to show strong growth, posting 19.5 per cent revenue growth compared to the prior year's quarter.

Dell led the market with 30.3 per cent revenue share, followed by EMC in second with 19.2 per cent and HP in third with 14.0 per cent market share.

"Strong growth in the midrange segment (price bands 6 & 7, $50K-149.99K) helped the overall growth in the third quarter of 2011" said Amita Potnis, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. "The trend to buy modular systems offering enterprise level functionality, such as scale-out architectures, tiering, data deduplication, etc. continues."