WW Disk Systems Market Down 18% in 1Q09 for IDC …

Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posted year-over-year growth of -13.6%, 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 18.2% 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 14.8% 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 9.9% 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 14.5% 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 20.7% revenue share in the first quarter, followed by HP and IBM in a statistical tie for the second position with 11.5% and 11.3% revenue share, respectively. Dell and Hitachi finished the quarter in a statistical tie for fourth place with 9.8% and 9.4% revenue share respectively.

Network Disk Storage Systems
The total network disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open SAN) had year-over-year growth of -12.5% 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 26.0% revenue share, followed by NetApp with 12.0% revenue share.

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

"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."

 Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide External Disk Storage Systems
 Factory Revenue, First Quarter of 2009
 (Revenues are in Millions)
                                                  
  Source: IDC WW Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker,
  March 5, 2009.      
  * Note: Starting in Q1 2008, Dell is reported
  as the combined entity of Dell and EqualLogic.

Total Disk Storage Systems Market
In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, HP led with 17.4% followed by EMC with 15.5% market share.

 Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide Total Disk Storage Systems
 Factory Revenue, First Quarter of 2009
 (Revenues are in Millions)  
                                                   
 Source: IDC WW Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker,
 March 5, 2009.      
 * Notes: Starting in Q1 2008, Dell is reported
 as the combined entity of Dell and EqualLogic.

Taxonomy Notes:
IDC defines a Disk Storage System as a set of storage elements, including controllers, cables, and (in some instances) host bus adapters, associated with three or more disks. A system may be located outside of or within a server cabinet and the average cost of the disk storage systems does not include infrastructure storage hardware (i.e. switches) and non-bundled storage software.

The information in this quantitative study is based on a branded view of the disk storage systems sale. Revenue associated with the products to the end user is attributed to the seller (brand) of the product, not the manufacturer. Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) sales are not included in this study. In this study, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) sales do not reflect their OEM sales to Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard.