WW External Disk Systems Up 19% in Revenues From 3Q09 to 3Q10

Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posted year-over-year growth of 19.0%, totaling slightly less than $5.2 billion, in the third quarter of 2010 (3Q10), according to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker.

For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market grew to nearly $7.0 billion in revenues, representing 18.5% growth from the third quarter of 2009. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reach 4,299 petabytes, growing 65.2% year over year.

"Users are still making up for their reduced storage spending in 2009 as the third quarter recorded the fourth highest revenues in a single quarter for external disk storage systems," said Liz Conner, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. "The increased investment by end users and vendors alike in iSCSI SAN and NAS (41.4% and 49.8% year-over-year growth respectively) has helped fuel the overall growth, while easing budget constraints sparked a pickup in FC SAN and higher end systems alike."

Total External Disk Storage Systems
EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 26.1% revenue share in the third quarter, followed by IBM in second with 12.9% market share. NetApp and HP are in a statistical tie for third place with 11.6% and 11.1% market share respectively. Dell ended in the fifth position with 9.1% market share. Given the recent acquisitions of 3PAR and Isilon, IDC notes that for 3Q10, 3PAR’s and Isilon’s share in the total external disk storage systems market was 0.83% and 0.75% respectively.

Open Networked Disk Storage Systems
The total open networked disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open / iSCSI SAN) grew 26.4% year over year in the second quarter to $4.3 billion in revenues. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total open networked storage market with 30.0% revenue share, followed by NetApp with a 14.0% revenue share.

In the open SAN market, which grew 18.5% year over year, EMC was the leading vendor with 23.0% revenue share, followed by IBM in second and HP in third with 15.5% and 14.3% share, respectively.

The NAS market grew 49.8% year over year, led by EMC with 46.6% revenue share and followed by NetApp with 28.9% share. The iSCSI SAN market continues to show strong momentum, posting 41.4% revenue growth compared to the prior year’s quarter. Dell led the market with 33.8% revenue share, followed by EMC and HP, in a statistical tie for second, with 13.8% and 13.7% market share respectively.

"The economic crisis of 2009 and commensurate budget reductions compelled end users invest in lower-priced storage systems that still offer enterprise-level features," said Amita Potnis, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. "Although most IT budget restraints have been lifted, the trend toward lower-priced systems continued into 2010 as revenues for external storage systems in the lower price bands ($0-$24.99k) increased by 21.1% year over year. End-users keep looking to get the most for their money, while vendors continue to invest resources to develop storage systems that meet this need."
 
WW External Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue
(Revenues are in millions)

 (Source: IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly
 Tracker, December 3, 2010)

Total Disk Storage Systems Market
In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, HP and EMC finished in a statistical tie* for the top position, in terms of market share, with HP at 19.5% market share and EMC at 19.4% market share.

WW Total Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue

(Revenues are in millions)

(Source: IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker, December 3, 2010)

Notes:

• IDC declares a statistical tie in the worldwide disk storage market when there is less than one percent difference in the factory revenues of two or more vendors.
• Starting in Q3 2009, EMC is reported as the combined entity of EMC and Data Domain. Starting in Q2 2010, HP is reported as the combined entity of HP and H3C.

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.