EMC leads the way in Q3 disk storage

Storage giant EMC has maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market and the network disk storage market, according to IDC’s third-quarter figures.

The Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker report found the storage vendor achieved 23 per cent revenue share for Q308 external disk storage systems, followed by IBM and HP on 12.7 per cent and 12.5 per cent respectively.

Dell settled in fourth with 9.1 per cent share and NetApp and Hitachi scored joint fifth place with 8.2 per cent and eight per cent revenue share.

Year on year, worldwide external disk storage systems revenues grew 8.8 per cent, totalling $4.9bn (£3.3bn) for Q308.

For the quarter the total disk storage systems market grew to $6.6bn in revenues, an increase of 1.1 per cent from Q307.

Natalya Yezhkova, research manager for storage systems research at IDC, said: “While the economic turmoil has already started affecting spending in various IT segments, including PCs and server systems, the market for external disk storage systems remained in a stable condition with solid year-over-year growth.

“Numerous IDC surveys of IT users suggest that storage is one of a few hardware categories where buyers are reluctant to cut spending independent of the economic situation.”

EMC also took pole position in the network disk storage system market with 2 7.9 per cent revenue share, ahead of HP on 12.3 per cent. The total network disk storage market achieved 15.3 per cent year-on-year growth for Q308, reaching more than $3.7bn in revenues.

EMC also led in the open storage area network (SAN) market with 25 per cent revenue share, and HP took second place with 14.7 per cent. The Open SAN market grew 14 per cent year on year.

The network attached storage (NAS) market grew 19.7 per cent year on year, led by EMC with 37.7 per cent revenue share and NetApp scored second place with 28.2 per cent share.

However, EMC did not lead the way in the iSCSI SAN market, which posted 96.7 per cent revenue growth compared with Q307. Dell achieved first place with 31.1 per cent revenue share, EMC came second with 13.3 per cent share and NetApp bagged a 12.5 per cent share of the spoils.

Liz Conner, research analyst at IDC Storage Research, said: “IP storage played a major part in this growth, fuelled by the strong adoption of iSCSI SANs, specifically within virtualised server environments, as well as solid growth in NAS-based solutions, addressing the ever-increasing growth in file-level data.”