Strong Growth Continues in the Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Market

Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posted year-over-year growth of 12.2%, totaling just over $5.6 billion, in the second quarter of 2011 (2Q11), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker. For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market grew to just shy of $7.5 billion in revenues, representing 10.2% growth from the prior year’s second quarter. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reached 5,353 petabytes, growing 46.7% year over year.

“External storage systems revenue increased solidly in the second quarter, with all the segments experiencing double-digit gains as end-user investment in new technology continued,” said Liz Conner, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. “New vendor offerings around virtualization, Big Data, and Cloud computing coupled with less restrictive IT budgets have contributed to this growth.”

Total External Disk Storage Systems

EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 28.7% revenue share in the second quarter, followed by IBM and NetApp tied* for second with 13.7% and 12.8% market share respectively. HP ended the quarter in fourth position, with 11.0%. Hitachi and Dell finished in a tie* for fifth with 8.1% and 7.9% market share respectively.

Open Networked Disk Storage Systems

The total open networked disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open / iSCSI SAN) grew 15.0% year over year in the second quarter to $4.8 billion in revenues. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total open networked storage market with 31.9% revenue share, followed by NetApp with a 15.0% revenue share.

In the Open SAN market, which grew 14.3% year over year, EMC was the leading vendor with 25.7% revenue share, followed by IBM in second and HP in third with 16.4% and 13.4% share, respectively.

The NAS market grew 16.9% year over year, led by EMC with 47.2% revenue share and followed by NetApp with 30.7% share. The iSCSI SAN market continues to show strong growth, posting 21.0% revenue growth compared to the prior year’s quarter. Dell led the market with 32.1% revenue share, followed by EMC in second with 17.7% and HP in third with 13.9% market share.

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Notes:

  • Starting in Q2 2010, HP is reported as the combined entity of HP and H3C.
  • Starting in Q4 2010, HP is reported as the combined entity of HP and 3PAR.
  • Starting in Q1 2011, EMC is reported as the combined entity of EMC and Isilon.
  • Starting in Q1 2011, Dell is reported as the combined entity of Dell and Compellent.

* 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.

Total Disk Storage Systems Market

In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, EMC finished in the top position followed by HP with market shares of 21.6% and 19.2% respectively.

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Notes:

  • Starting in Q2 2010, HP is reported as the combined entity of HP and H3C.
  • Starting in Q4 2010, HP is reported as the combined entity of HP and 3PAR.
  • Starting in Q1 2011, EMC is reported as the combined entity of EMC and Isilon.
  • Starting in Q1 2011, Dell is reported as the combined entity of Dell and Compellent.
  • * 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.

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.

IDC’s Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker is a quantitative tool for analyzing the global disk storage market on a quarterly basis. The Tracker includes quarterly shipments and revenues (both customer and factory), Terabytes, $/Gigabyte, Gigabyte/Unit, and Average Selling Value. Each criteria can be segmented by location, installation base, operating system, vendor, family, model, and region.