Enterprise Disk Systems in Western Europe Declined From 2Q11 to 2Q12

Enterprise-grade
external disk storage systems (EDSS) factory revenues in Western Europe
declined 0.3% to $1.26 billion in the second quarter of 2012 over the
same period last year, according to IDC Corp.‘s EMEA
Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker.

When accounting for
changes in currency exchange rates, quarterly growth reached 2.7% for
the region, while moving four-quarter trending shows a pace of 2.8%.

"The
economic environment remained challenging for the quarter, putting
stress on markets and suppressing overall growth," said Donna Taylor,
research director for IDC’s European Storage Group. "Out of the major
markets, Italy was the worst impacted by budget cuts, while France
cooled off a bit after several quarters of strong rallying. On the
bright side, Germany and the United Kingdom, alongside with most of the
Western European markets, expanded in real terms for the quarter."

HDD
pricing and supply substantially improved, helping new capacity
shipments to accelerate, while still below historical averages. Newly
deployed enterprise disk storage systems capacity in Western Europe grew
by nearly 15% in the quarter over last year, exceeding the 1 exabyte
barrier.

Top Market and Vendor Highlights
In a tough
comparison against out of band strong sales last year, high-end storage
deployments, or systems with an average selling price of over $250,000,
declined in local currency value by about 10% for the quarter. EMC
managed to edge up its share of the high-end segment as large VNX
installations offset the eroding positions of Symmetrix under
competitive pressure. Hitachi Data Systems overtook IBM as the second
biggest vendor of high-end storage disk systems in Western Europe,
punctuating the competitiveness of its VSP platform. HP penetrated the
space further with 3PAR, but offset by lower XP sales.

Midrange,
or systems selling between $25,000 and 250,000, once again enjoyed some
very strong uptake for the quarter compared to the previous year. This
was largely driven by product strengths, execution, and competitive ASP
pressure. NetApp lost share as the company transitioned over to a new OS
release which prolonged sales cycles temporarily, but still maintained
its top spot in the segment. EMC closed in on NetApp, helped by
additional Isilon and Data Domain sales. IBM gained mostly on the back
of a strong Storwize V7000 sales traction, while growth in midrange 3PAR
sales offset EVA’s managed fall at HP. Dell successfully migrated its
FC business onto Compellent from EMC’s technology. However, EqualLogic
had a tough time in a highly competitive environment after a series of
strong quarters, resulting in loss of quarterly share for the company.

"Overall,
top rankings haven’t changed since the first quarter. Dollar revenue
growth slowed down for most players as the dollar gained versus local
currencies, some major product refreshes temporarily lengthened sales
cycles and the competitive environment put pressure on ASPs," said
Daniel Bizo, senior storage research analyst for IDC.

Factory Revenue Growth
From EDSS Sales,
2Q12, Western Europe