EMC: Tape market 'in collapse'

As vendor wraps up its partner summit in Las Vegas, backup division president BJ Jenkins highlights EMC's dominance in the space

The president of EMC’s backup division used the vendor’s partner summit in Las Vegas to highlight its dominance within the data protection market and the decline of tape.

Citing figures from analyst IDC, BJ Jenkins, who has headed the backup division since January, described the tape market as “in collapse”.

“Over the past decade you see a backup market that is growing in mid-single digits with a compound annual growth rate of around five per cent,” said Jenkins.

“It is the same players and a very mature market and traditionally that backup data went to tape. If you look back 10 years, in 1999 tape accounted for 11.9 per cent of the external storage market. If you look today, it is around 4.6 per cent. You are really looking at a market that is in collapse,” he added.

The reason behind tape’s fall from grace lies with the growing popularity of de-duplication and purpose-built backup appliances, he added.

“If you look at the market share figures from IDC for purpose-built appliances, EMC has 64.2 per cent market share,” he explained. “So, for the fastest-growing part of the market for purpose-built backup appliances, EMC is the clear winner.”

Stephen Manley, chief technology officer of the backup recovery systems division, said operational problems with tape have also caused end users to seek out alternative backup methods.

“In the beginning there was tape and with tape came certainty. You knew who was doing your backups and where your backups were going,” he said.

“Of course, you also did not know if you were going to get your data back or if you were going to get the version of your data back that you wanted. And if it did work out well, you usually had to wait so long that by the time you got your data back, you had moved on,” he added.

Jenkins also claimed the firm is dealing with misconceptions over the strength of its hold on the overall backup market.

“EMC has clear market leadership in the data backup market and I do not think that is something many people are aware of,” he said. “Some of our competitors might claim to have market leadership, but when customers want an end-to-end backup solution, they go for the market leader and choose EMC.”