Top Storage Stories of 2018

Here is our selection of the most important news in calendar year 2018 published in StorageNewsletter.com (for each rubric they are classified by date, from the mot recent one):

HDD: market declining
HDD Market to Decline Q/Q in 4Q18 to 88 Million to 90 Million Units – Trendfocus
Milestone: Seagate Achieves 16TB Capacity on Internal HAMR 3.5-Inches HDD Test Units
Beyond 20TB in 2020
Results of 97,600 HDDs Tested – Backblaze
WW Record Beaten by Western Digital on HDD: 15TB
Following 14TB by WD, Seagate and Toshiba

SSDs and Flash: prices dropping
Contract Prices of NAND Flash Products to Drop Further in 1H19 – DRAMeXchange
DRAM and NAND Flash Products to See Price Decline in 4Q18 and 2019 – DRAMeXchange
NAND Market Dominated by Samsung (38%), Toshiba and Western Digital (19%+14%), SK Hynix (11%), Micron (11%) and Intel (3%)
2019 to Be Challenging Year for NAND Vendors – Trendfocus
Some price drops for 4Q18 may be close to double-digit declines
FMS: Intel 3D NAND SSD DC P4500 With Up to 32TB for 12-Inch Ruler
Samsung to Invest $7 Billion in NAND Flash Memory
Over 3 years to double production capacity in China

Systems: AFAs pushing market
WW Enterprise Storage Systems Market Revenue Up Yearly 19% in 3Q18 – IDC
Lenovo +94%, Inspur +65%, Dell +22%, HPE -3%, Hitachi -10%, IBM -21%
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Hyperconverged Infrastructure
Leaders in order: Nutanix, VMware, Dell EMC, Cisco, HPE
2018 Magic Quadrant for General-Purpose Disk Arrays – Gartner
Leaders: NetApp, HPE, Huawei, Dell EMC, Hitachi Vantara, IBM and Infinidat
Leaders in Hyperconverged Infrastructure – The Forrester Wave
Nutanix, VMware, Cisco and HPE
2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant on Solid-State Arrays
Pure Storage, NetApp, HPE, IBM, Dell EMC, Hitachi Vantara, Kaminario leaders
WW Converged Systems Revenue Up 20% Y/Y in 1Q18 Reaching $3.2 Billion – IDC
In hyperconverged systems, leader Dell beating Nutanix, HPE and Cisco like in 4Q17
Best AFAs From Dell EMC, HPE Nimble, NetApp, Pure Storage and Tegile
According to DCIG 2018-19 All-flash Array Buyer’s Guide

Software: object storage growing
Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage
Dell EMC, IBM, Qumulo and Scality lead the pack.
IDC MarketScape: WW Object-Based Storage 2018
With profile of one of leader, Scality, in front of IBM, Hitachi Vantara, NetApp, Dell EMC

Interface: success of NVMe
NVMe Market at $80 Billion in 2022 – G2M Research

Cloud: killing tape?
Seagate Wants to Kill Tape
In partnership with Tape Ark in Australia to migrate tape-archived data to cloud
LTO-8 Vs. Backblaze Cloud Storage Costs
Tape 75% more expensive for 50TB

Tape: record of 20TB
IBM TS1160 Tape Drive 60F for TS4500 Library Delivers 20TB Native Capacity

Market reports: 175ZB of storage by 2025
Global Datasphere From 33ZB in 2018 to 175ZB by 2025
22ZB must ship across all media types from 2018 to 2025, with 59% supplied from HDDs – IDC/Seagate

Acquisitions: less than former years
Violin Systems Completes Acquisition X-IO Storage
Huge Acquisition: Red Hat by IBM
For $34 billion
Micron Intends to Acquire Remaining Interest in IM Flash Technologies JV With Intel for $1.5 Billion
CA Technologies Stockholders Approved Acquisition by Broadcom
For $18.9 billion as expected
DDN Got Tintri for $60 Million
Newcomer StorCentric to Acquire Drobo as Well as Nexsan
Toshiba Finally Completes $18 Billion Sale of NAND Chip Unit to Bain
Carbonite Closes Acquisition of Mozy From Dell
At $146 million in cash
Thoma Bravo Completed Acquisition of Barracuda
For $1.6 billion as expected
Veeam Acquires Fast Growing N2WS for $42.5 Million in Cash

Start-Ups: $100 million and more raised
Actifio Raises $100 Million
Cohesity Raises $250 Million, Highest Round Since 2015 Among Storage Start-Ups
Dropbox Raised $756 Million in IPO, Stock Up 36%

Financial results of biggest storage companies
Dell: Fiscal 3Q19 Financial Results
Third consecutive quarter of revenue growth for storage
Nutanix: Fiscal 1Q19 Financial Results
$3 billion in revenue expected by 2021
Pure Storage: Fiscal 3Q19 Financial Results
Hoping to approach $1.4 billion for fiscal year, up 35% Y/Y/
$3 billion in revenue expected by 2021
NetApp: Fiscal 2Q19 Financial Results
AFA business grew 29% Y/Y to annualized revenue run rate of $2.2 billion.
Seagate: Fiscal 1Q19 Financial Results
Shipped 4% more HDDs than Western Digital for same three-month period
Carbonite: Fiscal 3Q18 Financial Results
Business subscription bookings of $44 million increased 59% Y/Y.
Commvault: Fiscal 2Q19 Financial Results
Revenue down 4% Q/Q, up 1% Y/Y, back to slighty profitable
Western Digital: Fiscal 1Q19 Financial Results
Revenue and net income down due to decline in flash pricing, next quarter to be horrible
IBM: Fiscal 3Q18 Financial Results
Storage hardware back to decline by 6% Y/Y, lack of innovation
Micron: Fiscal 4Q18 Financial Results
With FY revenue of $30 billion, continues to be largely number one worldwide storage company.
HPE: Fiscal 3Q18 Financial Results
Storage once more decreasing, 3% Q/Q, but up 16% for 9-month period
Veeam: 2Q18 Being 40th Consecutive Quarter of Double-Digit Bookings Growth
Moving closer to $1 billion company; 307,000 customers worldwide