Data storage business feels the cold winds of recession

7 Sep 2009

Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posted a decline of 18.3pc year over year in the second quarter of 2009 totalling US$4.1 bn.

Total disk storage systems factory revenues fell to US$5.7bn in Q2, a decline of 18.7pc from the prior year’s second quarter, driven by continued weakness in server systems sales, according to the IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker.

Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reached 2,345 petabytes, growing 15.2pc year over year.

“The enterprise storage systems market continued to feel the impact of current economic conditions, posting its third straight year-over-year decline. However, certain sweet spots in the market continue to thrive,” said Liz Conner, research analyst, Storage Systems.

“iSCSI SAN and FC SAN both showed strong year-over-year growth of 57.2pc and 66.8pc, respectively, in the entry-level price bands ($0K-$14.99K) as customers continue to demand enterprise level network storage at a more economically friendly price point.

“Similarly, midrange NAS (price band $15K-$49.99K) enjoyed solid year-over-year growth of 20.7pc as file-level data generation continues to be a hot topic for many customers.”

EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 21.5pc revenue share in the second quarter, followed by IBM with 14.9pc revenue share.

HP ended in the third position with 11.4pc market share. Dell and NetApp finished the quarter in a statistical tie for fourth position with 9.8pc and 8.9pc revenue share, respectively.

“While all vendors are down year over year, we are beginning to see several storage vendors whose external disk storage revenues are showing sequential (quarter-over-quarter) growth, indicating some stability beginning to take shape in the market,” said Steve Scully, research manager, Enterprise Storage at IDC.

The total network disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open / iSCSI SAN) declined 15.3pc year over year in the second quarter to more than US$3.2bn in revenues. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total network storage market with 26.0pc revenue share, followed by IBM with 13.8pc revenue share.

In the Open SAN market, which declined 23.8pc year over year, EMC led with 23.1pc revenue share.

The NAS market declined 6.8pc year over year, led by EMC with 38.7pc revenue share and followed by NetApp with 26.1pc share.

The iSCSI SAN market continues to show strong momentum, posting 27.2pc revenue growth compared to the prior year’s quarter. Dell led the market with 35.3pc revenue share, followed by EMC with 15.7pc.

By John Kennedy

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com