WW External Disk Market Grew 11% From 2007 to 2008

Worldwide external controller-based (ECB) disk storage revenue totaled $18 billion in 2008, an 11.3 percent increase over 2007 revenue of $16.2 billion, according to Gartner, Inc.

“The double-digit full year growth rate of 11.3 percent is all the more impressive given the current economic downturn and demonstrates the resilience of the storage industry,” said Donna Taylor, principal research analyst for Gartner’s global Storage Quarterly Statistics program.

There were no market share leadership changes compared with last year. EMC maintained its No.1 position with 25 percent revenue market share. IBM placed second with 13.6 percent, and Hewlett-Packard came in third with 11.6 percent. Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems placed fourth with 9.2 percent, followed by Dell with 8.8 percent. NetApp and Sun Microsystems placed sixth and seventh, respectively, with 7.8 percent and 5.2 percent market share. Dell showed the strongest growth year-on-year at 15.5 percent.

Worldwide External Controller-Based Disk Storage Vendor Revenue Estimates for 2008
(Millions of U.S. Dollars)

(1) EMC revenue excludes OEM revenue from Dell and Fujitsu Siemens.
(2) Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems revenue excludes OEM revenue from HP and Sun Microsystems.
Source: Gartner (March 2009)

In the fourth quarter of 2008, worldwide ECB revenue showed growth of 5.4 percent. Fifth place Dell experienced the greatest year-over-year fourth quarter revenue growth of 11.3 percent.

Worldwide External Controller-Based Disk Storage Vendor Revenue Estimates for 4Q08
(Millions of U.S. Dollars)

(1) EMC revenue excludes OEM revenue from Dell and Fujitsu Siemens.
(2) Hitachi/HDS revenue excludes OEM revenue from HP and Sun Microsystems.
Source: Gartner (March 2009)

Gartner external controller-based disk storage reports reflect hardware only revenue, as well as hardware revenue associated with financial leases and managed services. Optional storage software revenue and storage area network infrastructure components are excluded.

Additional information on the ECB disk storage market is available in the Gartner Dataquest report Market Share: Disk Array Storage, All Regions, All Countries, 1Q05-4Q08. The report includes vendor market share by data access method, price band, channel and operating system segmentation.