External Disk Storage Capacity Sold in CEMA Doubles From 1Q10 to 1Q11

The external disk storage market in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) recorded a 16.9% year-on-year increase in terms of value in the first quarter of 2011 to total $366.8 million.

International market research company IDC has recorded the capacity sold at 163.1 petabytes, which was double the figure reported in the same period last year.

Fiber channel SAN-attached storage continued to hold the largest value share at 62.1%. However, the category grew only a modest 5.5% year-on-year, far behind the rapidly expanding NAS and iSCSI storage systems. The boost in these technologies was triggered by the introduction of new products and the customization of existing ones to match the needs of small and medium-size businesses.

"IDC believes that the storage market will reach the 2008 pre-crisis level this year," says Research Manager Pavel Roland, Storage Systems, IDC CEMA. "While large projects in sectors like telecom, banking, and government will retain a constant level of financing, the unsaturated SMB segment significantly drives demand for storage. Organizations in this segment are looking for basic and innovative storage solutions and storage vendors are responding."

The top three vendors accounted for over two-thirds of the market’s value, as market consolidation increased due to acquisitions that took place in the last quarter of 2010. EMC topped the market with 36.8% share in revenue, followed by HP and IBM, with 18.1% and 16.8%, respectively.

"Technological differentiation and precise targeting will become vital in vendors’ competitive strategies as the storage market becomes increasingly consolidated," says Marina Kostova, research analyst with IDC’s storage systems group. "Unified storage, virtualization, deduplication, and storage tiering are emerging as the most promising offerings due to the demand for cost reductions, ease of use, and improved performance."

IDC’s Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker delivers timely intelligence and an inclusive database detailing changes and trends in the CEMA storage market. The tracker enables users to view data by volume, value, terabytes, country, year, quarter, vendor, product family, model, location, topology, installation, protocol, redundancy, storage class, and price band.