Storage market reaches a two-year peak

8 Sep 2008

The worldwide external disk storage systems business reported a 16.7pc year-over-year growth totalling US$5.1bn for the second quarter – the highest in two years.

Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reached 1,777 petabytes of data – growing 43.7pc year over year.

“Despite concerns about a 2008 slowdown in IT spending, external disk storage systems spending experienced strong growth in the first half of 2008,” said Natalya Yezhkova, research manager, Storage Systems at IDC.

“The second quarter of the year was remarkable, not only because it is the highest growth in two years, but also because of the distribution of this growth across different market segments. The ability of vendors to meet a variety of needs among customers with a diversity of storage products and initiatives led to solid growth across all installation environments, even in those that declined over the past several quarters,” Yezhkova said.

EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 21.7pc revenue share in the second quarter, followed by IBM and HP in a statistical tie with 13.1pc and 12.9pc revenue share, respectively.

Dell ended the quarter in the fourth position with 9.2pc share. NetApp and Hitachi finished the quarter in a statistical tie for fifth with 8.0pc and 7.6pc revenue share respectively.

Among the top five suppliers, EMC and NetApp posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth during the second quarter, with 19.7pc and 17.2pc growth, respectively.

By John Kennedy

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

editorial@siliconrepublic.com