Storage giants falter as smaller rivals cash in

Top five vendors see total storage revenue slump as smaller players enjoy sales surge

All of the top five storage vendors saw their total disk storage sales slump in the first quarter, according to IDC, which pointed to a revenue surge among their smaller rivals.

Startups have been putting increasing pressure on industry giants in the storage space over the past year – the likes of Pure Storage, X-IO and Nexenta have all publicly declared war on the market leaders – and the latest figures suggest their efforts are paying off.

The "others" category of IDC's storage tracker, which includes all eligible firms outside the top five, collectively enjoyed a 6.8 per cent sales hike in the first quarter, snatching another 3.7 percentage points of market share – taking the figure to 28.8 per cent.

But the top five vendors – EMC, HP, Dell, NetApp and IBM – all suffered storage sales slumps over the same period. IBM and Dell's total (internal and external) storage revenue fell 20.5 per cent and 19 per cent annually while market leader EMC hung on to the top spot despite its revenue falling 8.8 per cent over the same period.

Overall, the total disk storage market generated $7.3bn (£4.34bn) in revenue – a 6.9 per cent dip on last year.

"The poor results of the first quarter were driven by several factors, the most important of which was a 25 per cent decline in high-end storage spending," said Eric Sheppard, IDC's storage research director.

"Other important contributors to the market decline include the mainstream adoption of storage-optimisation technologies, a general trend towards keeping systems for longer, economic uncertainty, and the ability of customers to address capacity needs on a micro and short-term basis through public cloud offerings."