EMEA Revenue in Purpose-Built Backup Appliance Market Recovers

The EMEA purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) market has been resilient to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, with spending on traditional backup appliances reaching $366.9 million in 1Q21, up 10.3% from 1Q20, according to International Data Corporation‘s PBBA tracker.

“Despite many workloads being located or produced in the cloud, spending on traditional backup appliances for data protection remains essential for many EMEA enterprises,” said Jimena Sisa, senior research analyst, EMEA storage systems. “Compliance with the GDPR remains a big factor in investments in PBBA market appliances. On one hand, enterprises in some European economies need to demonstrate by law that their data, regardless of its location and type, is protected, but at the same time, enterprises are also seeking to modernize their datacenter, though they like the stability too. So, they would favor suppliers that do not change their systems frequently, but whose solutions provide a single pane of glass and offer consumption models like in the cloud.“

Regional Highlights

Western Europe
The PBBA market in Western Europe increased in value by 11.6% year on year, reaching $287.2 million in 1Q21.

The DACH market continued to be the largest and strongest in Western Europe in 1Q21, responsible for 35% of market value, 4.7 points more than in the previous year, and reporting an increase of 29.1% year on year.

The U.K.&I. has lost 2.2 points in market share since last year, at 23.4% market value, an increase of 1.8% in value year on year.

The French PBBA market declined 3.4% Y/Y in value and 10.7% in market share.

“PBBA demand in Western Europe increased in 1Q21, especially in the public sector, with the sector expected to continue to invest in this type of backup appliance,” said Sisa.

During 1Q21 major investments have been in target systems, which increased 26.7% in market value, followed by integrated systems (which increased 5.3% Y/Y). Growth in mainframes (VTL), however, decreased 60.6% Y/Y.

CEMA
In 1Q21, the double-digit growth in the CEE PBBA market was the main driver of the entire CEMA region, which grew 5.7% Y/Y ($79.7 million in value). The MEA market remained flat.

Demand in CEMA came from government and education, and from the enterprise sector. While SMB clients were the most active in CEE, medium to large businesses invested heavily in PBBA to secure their operations in the new remote setup environment.

“Both subregions developed more positively than expected due to a continuing preference for entry-level and mid-range backup appliances, which are still seen as an alternative to other growing consumption models and solutions,” said Marina Kostova, research manager, CEMA storage systems. “The boosting from the GDPR, as in Western Europe, was also quite visible in the EU CEE countries and this kept spending resilient.“

Major companies covered in the tracker include Dell Inc., Veritas, HPE, IBM, Quantum, Barracuda, Oracle, Fujitsu, Exagrid, HDS, Unitrends, and FalconStor Software.

Taxonomy Notes
In its Worldwide Quarterly Purpose-Built Backup Appliance Tracker, IDC defines a PBBA as a standalone disk-based solution that uses software, disk arrays, server engines, or nodes that are used for backup data and specifically for data coming from a backup application (e.g., NetWorker, NetBackup, TSM, and Backup Exec) or that can be tightly integrated with the backup software to catalog, index, schedule, and perform data movement.

PBBAs are deployed in standalone configurations or as gateways. PBBA solutions deployed in a gateway configuration connect to and store backup data on general-purpose storage. Here, the gateway device serves as the component that is purpose built solely for backup and not to support any other workload or application. Regardless of packaging (as an appliance or gateway), PBBAs can have multiple interfaces or protocols. They can also provide and receive replication to or from remote sites and a secondary PBBA for DR.