WW External Disk Storage Market Grew 11.6% in 2Q11

Despite gloomy macro conditions worldwide and geopolitical unrest in the Middle East, the worldwide external controller-based (ECB) disk storage market continued to grow at a record pace in the second quarter of 2011, according to Gartner, Inc.

Worldwide ECB disk storage revenue totaled $5.1 billion in the second quarter of 2011, an 11.6 percent increase from revenue of $4.6 billion in the second quarter of 2010.

In the second quarter of 2011, the Asia/Pacific and Latin America regions outpaced the overall market, growing 27.9 percent and 22.4 percent, respectively, followed by Europe, the EMEA at 12.2 percent, North America at 7.5 percent and Japan at 1.8 percent.

From a year-over-year perspective, the block-access market segment, which is dominated by SAN deployments, generally met Gartner’s forecast expectations with 7.8 percent growth, while the file-access NAS market segment came in stronger at 27 percent growth.

"These results reflect the ongoing strength of initiatives associated with product refreshments, deployments of ECB disk storage to support virtualized server and virtualized desktop infrastructures, the transitioning of backup/recovery technology from tape to disk, and the implementation of new unstructured data applications on file-access disk storage platforms," said Roger Cox, research vice president at Gartner. "Client inquiries underpin the observation that IT executives remain willing to invest in modern ECB disk storage solutions to improve operational efficiency and minimize the impact of unabated terabyte growth."

EMC increased its worldwide ECB disk storage revenue market share to 31.5 percent in the second quarter of 2011. NetApp experienced the strongest growth among the top-tier vendors with a revenue increase of 28.9 percent year over year.

   WW External Disk Storage Vendor Revenues for 2Q11
                      (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

 (Source: Gartner, September 2011)

Four vendors achieved double-digit year-over-year growth in the second quarter of 2011, beating the overall market performance. EMC benefited from widespread refreshment of its large CLARiiON and Celerra installed base by its new VNX unified storage system, the positive effect of its Isilon acquisition, the continued growth of the market-leading Data Domain backup/recovery solutions and the high-end Symmetrix VMAX platform.

NetApp’s performance reflects the value of its seamless unified storage architecture and its strong partnership with Fujitsu Technology Solutions, as well as its overall strength in the reseller channel. IBM regained its footing with solid performances from the established DS8000 and XIV storage systems, supported by the progressive growth of its new Storwize V7000, which offset a 16 percent decline with the DS5000/3000 series sourced from NetApp. The high-end Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) is the engine driving Hitachi/HDS performance.

Even though HP’s P2000 MSA series, P4000 SAN Solution series and 3PAR Storage Systems achieved above-market results, the decline in EVA revenue and anemic performance in the NAS market continued to dampen HP’s total ECB disk storage results.

The increase in Dell EqualLogic PS series and the PowerVault MD series in conjunction with the newly acquired Compellent Storage Center platform were unable to offset the CLARiiON revenue drop-off associated with Dell’s disengagement with EMC. Two-thirds of Oracle’s year-over-year revenue decline was attributed to the severed reseller relationship with HDS for the high-end 9000 series, but it still struggled to gain momentum with its ZFS Storage Appliance and midrange 6000 series platforms. The decline in ‘Other Vendor’ revenue was caused by the acquisition of 3PAR, Compellent and Isilon by HP, Dell and EMC, respectively.

EMC led the market for the first half of 2011, garnering 30 percent of the market). Its closest competitors were IBM and NetApp with 13.4 percent and 12.7 percent market share, respectively.

     WW External Disk Storage Vendor Revenues for 1H11
                            (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

 (Source: Gartner, September 2011)

Note 1: EMC revenue excludes OEM revenues from Dell and Fujitsu Technology Solutions.
Note 2: Hitachi/HDS revenue excludes OEM revenue from HP and Oracle.
Note 3: NetApp revenue excludes OEM revenue from IBM and Engenio OEM revenue.
Note 4: Fujitsu’s branded revenue does not include products sold under the EMC and NetApp brands.

Gartner ECB disk storage reports reflect hardware-only revenue, as well as hardware revenue associated with financial leases and managed services. Optional and separately priced storage software revenue and storage area network infrastructure components are excluded.