IDC Reports Record Storage Growth

Disk-based storage did well in the third quarter this year, as the size of the worldwide disk storage systems market grew at a record rate of 13.3 percent to $5.7 billion.

IDC said sales grew a record 12.5 percent from the year-ago quarter to $3.9 billion, the best ever growth since the research company began tracking sales in 2001.

The boom in storage sales can be attributed to the growing glut of data companies are accumulating at a rapid clip. Most of this data has to be corralled and protected thanks to federal record retention regulations.

Led by EMC’s 27.2 percent share, the total network storage market increased 17.1 percent year over year in Q3 to $2.5 billion.

HP was No. 2 with 21.5 percent of this market, which includes network-attached storage (NAS) combined with open and iSCSI storage area network (SAN) .

Breaking out the separate storage approaches, IDC said the Open/iSCSI SAN market grew 19.6 percent year over year, totaling $2 billion in revenue.

EMC and HP still compete for the top position, but remain virtually tied: HP had 25 percent revenue share and EMC had 24.2 percent revenue share for Q3.

EMC is still the NAS market leader, with a commanding 40 percent share. Network Appliance is No. 2, with 35.1 percent.

However, NetApp’s 35.1 percent share commands the iSCSI SAN market, besting EMC’s 24 percent market share in a booming niche that doubled with 105 percent revenue growth year over year.

EMC held its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 20.3 percent, with HP and IBM posting 19.1 percent and 12.9 percent revenue share, respectively.

While IDC figures indicate EMC slipped almost a full percentage point, from 21.2 percent in Q2, EMC claims the combined EMC and Dell/EMC cobranded revenue represents 26.6 percent of the total external disk storage market in Q3.

Thanks to its partnership with EMC, Dell enjoyed the most overall growth in the storage space: 33 percent in external systems, 30.8 percent overall market from Q3 2004.

Hitachi improved its share position to end the quarter in a virtual tie with Dell for the fourth position with 8.3 percent revenue share versus 8.4 percent for Dell.

Overall, HP maintained its lead in the total worldwide disk storage systems market, with 23.5 percent revenue share. IBM and EMC followed with 20.7 percent 13.7 percent, respectively.

In other stats, disk storage petabytes grew 58 percent year over year, totalling 505 petabytes.