External disk market excels
Overall storage market also grows, according to analysts' reports
Storage VARs received a boost last week when the external disk storage market showed its greatest growth in two years.
Research from analysts IDC and Gartner revealed the total storage market had increased in the last quarter because of new regulatory requirements and the replacement of outdated legacy systems.
The external disk storage market grew by 8.4 per cent year-on-year to $3.7bn in the final three months of 2003, resulting in a yearly increase of 52 per cent, according to IDC's Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker.
The total storage market grew at a slower rate of 6.1 per cent, according to IDC, with demand for external storage higher than that of internal storage.
Gartner gave more conservative estimates, claiming the overall external storage market increased by six per cent last year to $12.9bn, and the total market by 5.7 per cent.
According to Eric Sheppard, research manager for storage at IDC, considering the market has been down, the findings make "a wonderful change".
He added: "There has only been limited understanding of compliance issues right now, and a need to replace old systems has been a stronger driver."
Simon Gay, consultancy practice leader at Computacenter, said: "People have been delaying spending over the past two years, but you can do that only for so long."
"Compliance is one issue, but storage is commercial common sense; it's always wise to keep data."
However, Dave Drennan, storage specialist at EMC reseller Repton, said: "Compliance is the new Y2K: it's something to be scared about."
But he added: "The real value-add is in designing the storage network and justifying the business case."
According to IDC, Hewlett Packard maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 21.7 per cent revenue share. EMC and IBM followed, with respective shares of 20 per cent and 16.8 per cent.
In the overall storage market, IBM nearly tied with HP for the top position.
HP and IBM had 25.6 per cent and 25.4 per cent share respectively, and EMC maintained the third position with a 13.3 per cent revenue share.