Storage Sizzles While Economy Fizzles

No matter how much doom and gloom is in the economy, customers are continuing to buy storage capacity, according to the latest quarterly report from IDC.

IDC, the Framingham, Mass.-based consulting firm, reported on Friday that it estimates about $4.9 billion worth of external disk storage systems were sold during the first quarter of 2008, an increase of 10.8 percent compared to the total $4.4 billion in revenue reported during the same quarter of 2007.

Leading the market was EMC, Hopkinton, Mass., whose external disk system revenue of $1.0 billion gave it a 21.4 percent share of the entire market for the quarter. It was followed by Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto, Calif., which sold $600 million worth of the products to give it a 12.4 percent market share, IDC said.

Rounding out the top six were IBM, Armonk, N.Y., at $560 million; Dell, Round Rock, Texas, at $450 million; NetApp, Sunnyvale, Calif., at $435 million; and Hitachi, Tokyo, at $433 million.

Of the top six vendors, Dell experienced the highest growth compared to last year at 17.5 percent, giving it just enough of a boost to grab the number four spot from NetApp. IBM, on the other hand, saw growth of only 2.7 percent, while HP had growth of only 4.4 percent, IDC said.

The total networked disk storage systems market also grew, but at a slightly lower pace compared to the external disk storage systems. Revenue for networked disk storage systems reached $6.7 billion in the first quarter, up 8.4 percent compared to the $6.2 billion reported a year ago, IDC said.

Leading the pack to keep the title of biggest storage hardware vendor was HP, with sales during the quarter of $1.3 billion, up 6.9 percent compared to last year. IBM's networked disk storage systems revenue, on the other hand, actually slipped 4.9 percent compared to last year to reach $1.1 billion.

They were followed by EMC with revenue of $1.039 billion, Dell with $679 million, Hitachi with $444 million, and NetApp with $435 million. Hitachi had the strongest growth at 18.9 percent, followed by Dell at 15.5 percent.

IDC also reported that EMC continues to lead the Open SAN market, which grew 14.7 percent over last year, with a 23.6 percent share of the revenue, followed by HP at 14.1 percent.

EMC also leads the NAS market, which grew 15.5 percent, with a 36.0 percent share, followed by NetApp at 31.6 percent.

Dell's $1.4 billion acquisition of EqualLogic early this year is helping make Dell the most upwardly-mobile of the top storage vendors. In the iSCSI SAN market, which grew 67.6 percent over last year, Dell with EqualLogic took over the top space with a 27.7 percent share, followed by NetApp and its 20.5 percent share.

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