Disk storage demand rises

The disk storage systems market continues to thrive, as organisations try to stay ahead of their data storage demands, according to IDC

The demand for disk storage systems is still on the rise, according to IDC’s Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Tracker. The total market grew by six per cent in the first quarter this year, although the analyst firm said seasonal variations caused Q1 revenues to be lower than in Q4 2004.

EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 21.4 per cent market share, followed by Hewlett-Packard and IBM with 17.7 per cent and 11.5 cent market share, respectively.

Hitachi edged out Dell for the fourth position with 9.1 per cent share, while Dell ended the quarter with 7.7 per cent of the market. Among the top five suppliers, Dell and EMC posted the strongest year-over-year growth during Q1 2005, with 29.2 per cent and 12.2 per cent growth, respectively.

In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, HP maintained its lead with 22.5 per cent share, followed by IBM with 18.6 per cent share. EMC maintained the third position with 14.8 per cent share.

Dell and EMC posted the largest year-over-year revenue growth among the top five vendors during the quarter, with 26.2 per cent and 12.2 per cent gained, respectively.

The total network storage market (NAS combined with Open and iSCSI SAN) posted 16.7 per cent year-over-year growth in Q1 to more than $2.3bn, according to the IDC report. EMC maintains its leadership in the total network storage market with 29 per cent revenue share, followed by HP with 20.4 per cent.

Dell and Network Appliance posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth for the quarter among the top five vendors, with 47.1 per cent and 29.7 per cent growth, respectively.

IDC defines a disk storage system as a set of storage elements, including controllers, cables and host bus adapters, associated with three or more disks. The average cost of the disk storage systems does not include infrastructure storage hardware (switches) and non-bundled storage software.