Global revenues of external disk storage systems factories grew by US$272m in the final quarter of 2006, representing 6pc growth from a year ago to US$4.8bn, according to IDC.
Q4 2006 figures from IDC’s Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker found that EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 22.1pc revenue share, followed by IBM and HP with 18.6pc and 13.7pc revenue share respectively. Dell and Hitachi rounded out the top five with 8.1pc and 7.3pc, respectively.
Among the top five suppliers, IBM and EMC posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth during the fourth quarter, with 15.5pc and 10.0pc growth respectively.
“The adoption of networked storage continues to fuel the market,” said Brad Nisbet, program manager with IDC’s Storage Systems Program. “In particular, we saw strong results for NAS [network-attached storage] which is indicative of ongoing interest in file-related storage.
“In addition, iSCSI [internet small computer system interface] continues to emerge as an alternative connection type for many customers as they look to simplify the environment for less mission-critical applications.”
“The market for network storage systems priced between US$15,000 and US$149,999 remained a sweet spot for vendors in 2006,” said Natalya Yezhkova, research manager with IDC’s Storage Systems Program. “These products grew at a double-digit rate and, for the first time, outsold the higher-priced segment (systems priced US$150,000 and over) during all four quarters.
“Several factors contributed to this dynamic, including the increased adoption of network storage by mid-sized businesses and the growing demand for less expensive, capacity-oriented storage aimed at more non-transactional applications such as digital content, email archives and replicated data,” said Yezhkova.
By Niall Byrne
