WW Enterprise Storage Market Grew 14% in 4Q17 – IDC

Total worldwide enterprise storage systems factory revenue was up 13.7% year over year to just under $13.6 billion in 4Q17, according to the International Data Corporation‘s Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker.

Total capacity shipments were up 39.3% year over year to 89.2EB during the quarter.

Revenue growth increased within the group of original design manufacturers (ODMs) that sell directly to hyperscale datacenters. This portion of the market increased 34.3% year over year to just under $2.8 billion.

Sales of server-based storage increased 23.8% during the quarter and accounted for $4.2 billion in revenue.

External storage systems remained the largest market segment, with the $6.6 billion in sales representing an increase of 1.8% year over year.

“Investments on enterprise storage systems are increasing at a very healthy pace,” said Eric Sheppard, research VP, IDC’s enterprise infrastructure team. “Infrastructure refresh, a broad market shift towards server-based storage, and rapid expansion within public cloud datacenters are combining to creating strong demand for enterprise storage systems.”

4Q17 Total Enterprise Storage Systems Market Results, by Company
HPE/New H3C Group and Dell were statistically tied* for the number 1 position of the total WW enterprise storage systems market, accounting for 18.9% and 18.0% of spending, respectively. IBM and NetApp finished tied for third with 5.5% and 5.4% market share, respectively. Huawei and Hitachi were tied for the number 5 position. Huawei achieved 3.8% market share and Hitachi achieved 3.3% market share. As a single group, storage systems sales by ODMs selling directly to hyperscale datacenter customers accounted for 20.4% of global spending during the quarter.

Top 5 Vendors, WW Total Enterprise Storage Systems Market, 4Q17
(revenue in $ million)

(Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, March 1, 2018)

4Q17 External Enterprise Storage Systems Results, by Company
Dell was the largest external enterprise storage systems supplier during the quarter, accounting for 26.6% of worldwide revenues. HPE/New H3C Group finished in the number 2 position with 12.24% share during the quarter. NetApp and IBM were tied at third place with 11.2% and 10.9% market shares respectively. Hitachi rounded out the top 5 with 6.8% market share.

Top 5 Vendors, WW External Enterprise Storage Systems Market, 4Q17
(revenue in $ million)

(Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, March 1, 2018)

Notes:
* -DC declares a statistical tie in the worldwide enterprise storage systems market when there is a difference of one% or less in the share of revenues or shipments among two or more vendors.
a – Dell represents the combined revenues for Dell and EMC.
b – Due to the existing joint venture between HPE and the New H3C Group, IDC will be reporting external market share on a global level for HPE as HPE/New H3C Group starting from 2Q16 and going forward.
c – HPE/New H3C Group includes the acquisition of Nimble, completed in April 2017

WW Top 5 External Enterprise Storage Systems Companies, 2Q17 Market Share

(Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, March 1, 2018)

Flash-Based Storage Systems Highlights
The total all-flash array (AFA) market generated just over $1.9 billion in revenue during the quarter, up 15.1% year over year. The hybrid flash array (HFA) segment of the market continues to be a significant part of the overall market with $2.7 billion in revenue, up 7.4% from the same quarter last year.

Taxonomy Notes
IDC defines an enterprise storage system as a set of storage elements, including controllers, cables, and (in some instances) HBAs, associated with three or more disks. A system may be located outside of or within a server cabinet and the average cost of the disk storage systems does not include infrastructure storage hardware (i.e. switches) and non-bundled storage software.

The information in this quantitative study is based on a branded view of the enterprise storage systems sale. Revenue associated with the products to the end user is attributed to the seller (brand) of the product, not the manufacturer. OEM sales are not included in this study.