Disk Storage Sector Grows In 2010

The market for disk storage systems looks to have left the recession. Revenues grew by 17.1 percent year-on-year at the start of 2010, according to a report from IDC.

External disk storage systems factory revenues came to $5 billion (£3.4bn) in the first quarter of 2010, according to the analyst’s Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker. Total disk storage systems – including internal drives – came in at $6.7 billion (£4.6bn) in revenues, an 18.8 percent improvement from the 2009 first quarter.

EMC takes a narrow lead

Total storage marks the closest competition among the vendors for market share. EMC made $1.22 billion (£832m) and got 18.2 percent marketshare, edging ahead of Hewlett-Packard which made $1.21 (£826), getting 18.0 percent.

The others in the top five are IBM with $955 million (£652m) giving it 14.2 percent, Dell on $852 million (£582m) scoring  12.7 percent and NetApp at $550 million (£375m) winning 8.2 percent.

Total capacity of disk storage systems shipped in the first three months of 2010 reached 3,397 petabytes – a whopping 55.2 percent upsurge over 2009, IDC said.

In external disk vendors, EMC maintained its number one position with 24.6 percent revenue share and $1.2 billion (£820m) in the first quarter, followed by IBM on $579 million (£395m) and NetApp on $550 million (£375m), giving them 11.7 percent and 11.1 percent market share respectively. HP at $482 million (£329m) and Dell with $410 million (£280m) rounded out the world top five with 10.2 percent and 10.1 percent market share, respectively.

Starting in Q3 2009, EMC is reported as the combined entity of EMC and Data Domain, following EMC’s purchase of the storage company IDC said.

IDC said the total open networked disk storage market – NAS combined with open/iSCSI SAN – grew by 26.3 percent year over year in the first quarter to $4 billion (£2.7bn) in revenues. In that segment, EMC holds the top position with 28.7 percent revenue share, followed by NetApp with 13.7 percent.

In the Open SAN market, which IDC said grew 20.3 percent in a year, EMC was the leading vendor with 22.2 percent share, followed by IBM and HP with 14.0 percent and 13.5 percent share, respectively.

The NAS market grew by 44.6 percent over 2009, IDC said, led by EMC with 45.1 percent revenue share and followed by NetApp with 26.9 percent.

The iSCSI SAN market also showed momentum, posting 45.7 percent revenue growth compared to the prior year’s quarter, IDC said. Dell led that market with 36.9 percent revenue share, followed by NetApp with 14.4 percent.

“The worldwide disk storage systems market is off to a strong start in Q1 2010, based on year-over-year growth, although annual comparisons are less indicative of market performance given the 2009 economic crisis,” said Natalya Yezhkova, a research manager in storage systems at IDC.

“As such, sequential comparisons can provide more information on a market recovery. Although the market declined in Q1 2010 compared to Q4 2009, the decline was lower than usual. This is a positive sign, suggesting increased storage budgets and continued demand for storage solutions.”