EMC, NetApp Lead The Storage Pack

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EMC and Network Appliance turned in impressive performances in the third quarter, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker.

EMC led the external disk storage systems market for the third consecutive quarter with 21.2% revenue share, driven by 17.4% year-over-year revenue growth for the quarter. HP, with a revenue decline of 7.5% year over year, came in second with 19% revenue share, followed by IBM with a 13.1% share.

Network Appliance posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth among the top vendors during the third quarter with 24.6% growth, while EMC had the largest share point gains from the previous year, gaining 2.5 point of revenue share.

HP maintained its lead in the total worldwide disk storage systems market (internal and external storage combined) with a 23.6% revenue share, followed by IBM with a 20.6% share. EMC maintained the third position with a 14.5% revenue share. EMC and Dell posted the largest year-over-year revenue growth among the top 5 vendors during the quarter, with 17.4% and 11.3% points gained, respectively.

According to IDC, worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues grew 3.5% year over year to $3.4 billion in the third quarter, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth. The total disk storage systems market grew 2.1% year over year, while storage capacity grew 50.5% year over year to 310 petabytes, the largest growth rate over the last seven quarters.

Numbers Reflect Move Toward Lower-Cost Storage

The numbers reveal a move toward lower-cost storage, IDC said.

“We saw an increase in the growth of petabytes shipped, which is yielding the largest dollar per gigabyte pricing decline in seven quarters, and points to a growing share of higher-capacity, lower-cost disk drive deployments and a broader variety of products offered by the major vendors,” said Brad Nisbet, program manager at IDC.

Top 5 Vendors
Worldwide External Disk Storage Systems Factory
Revenue, Third Quarter 2004

(Revenues are in millions)
Vendor Q3 2004
revenue
Market share Q3 2003
revenue
Market share Revenue
growth
EMC $724 21.2% $617 18.7% 17.4%
HP $647 19.0% $699 21.2% -7.5%
IBM $448 13.1% $450 13.7% -0.6%
Hitachi $289 8.5% $296 9.0% -2.3%
Dell $237 6.9% $212 6.4% 11.9%
Others $1,066 31.3% $1021 31.0% 4.4%
All vendors $4,988 100% $4,883 100% 2.1%

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker,
December 2004

The networked disk storage systems market (NAS combined with Open and iSCSI SANs) grew 17.1% year over year and surpassed the $2 billion mark for the second consecutive quarter. EMC continued its leadership in the total networked storage market with a 28.9% revenue share, followed by HP and IBM, with 23.3% and 11.5% revenue share, respectively.

Similar to the second quarter, the top position in the Open/iSCSI SAN market was again a close call. HP and EMC were again locked in a statistical tie (with a 0.2 point share difference) for the top ranking in the market, which grew 17.8% year over year.

In the NAS market, which grew 14.3% year over year, NetApp led with 36.3% revenue share, followed by EMC with a 34.8% share. HP again posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth among the vendors tracked by IDC, with 55.9% growth during the third quarter.

Top 5 Vendors
Total Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue, Third Quarter 2004

(Revenues are in millions)
Vendor Q3 2004
revenue
Market share Q3 2003
revenue
Market share Revenue
growth
HP $1,180 23.6% $1,262 25.8% -6.5%
IBM $1,025 20.6% $1,019 20.9% 0.5%
EMC $724 14.5% $617 12.6% 17.4%
Dell $358 7.2% $322 6.6% 11.3%
Hitachi $298 6.0% $309 6.3% -3.5%
Others $1,402 28.1% $1,354 27.7% 3.6%
All vendors $4,988 100% $4,883 100% 2.1%

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker,
December 2004

The iSCSI SAN market again experienced sequential growth acceleration, posting nearly 44% revenue growth from the second quarter. Network Appliance continues to lead the market with 43.1% share, followed by EMC with a 22.1% share.

“Increased adoption of entry and midrange networked storage (priced below $150,000 per system) drove the market for external disk storage systems up on an annual basis, compensating for a decline in high-end systems sales,” said Natalya Yezhkova, IDC’s senior research analyst for storage systems.

“During the third quarter, the top vendors intensified their efforts to penetrate the midrange market through the introduction of new external storage systems and solutions targeted to specific customer and application segments,” Yezhkova said. As a result of these efforts, midrange networked storage posted both annual and sequential growth for the second consecutive quarter, Yezhkova said.

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Paul Shread
Paul Shread
eSecurity Editor Paul Shread has covered nearly every aspect of enterprise technology in his 20+ years in IT journalism, including an award-winning series on software-defined data centers. He wrote a column on small business technology for Time.com, and covered financial markets for 10 years, from the dot-com boom and bust to the 2007-2009 financial crisis. He holds a market analyst certification.

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