India’s External Storage Market Grew 9% Y/Y in 4Q18 – IDC

As per IDC’s AsiaPac Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker Q4 2018 release, India’s external storage market witnessed a growth of 8.8% Y/Y (by vendor revenue) and stood at $87.8 million in 4Q18.

Increased storage demand from government, professional services, and banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) drove the growth in 4Q18. Technology refresh/capacity expansion, modernization initiatives and investments on emerging technologies drove the incremental growth.

“Continuous business innovations along with the need for faster time to market is of at most importance in today’s competitive world. Organizations are looking for storage solutions which are agile, scalable and ease to use to address the business transformation needs,” says Dileep Nadimpalli, research manager, enterprise infrastructure, IDC India.

AFAs witnessed a significant Y/Y growth of 30.0% in 4Q18 contributed 27.9% of the overall external storage market. Improved performance vs cost ratio for flash deployments pushing organizations to consider AFA.

Entry and mid-range external storage segments saw strong Y/Y growth in 4Q18. Mid-range external storage segment continued to lead the market constituting 60.6% of the total external storage market, while high-end storage segment witnessed a Y/Y decline of 5.0% in 4Q18.

“With the exponential growth of data and growing number of applications and users, organizations are moving from managing storage systems to managing data. Organizations are considering new-age storage systems with built-in machine learning and analytics capabilities which are data aware providing real-time insights on performance and data usage,” says Ranganath Sadasiva, director, enterprise solutions, IDC India.

Major Vendors Analysis

Dell Inc. continued to be the market leader with a 24.7% market share by vendor revenue, followed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise with a 16.3% market share in 4Q18. One of the smaller external storage vendors witnessed a significant Y/Y growth due to a large multi-million-dollar deal from the professional services industry in 4Q18.

Forecast
India’s external enterprise storage systems market is expected to grow at a single-digit CAGR for the 2018-2023 time-period. Advent of third platform technologies and digital transformation initiatives across organizations would drive incremental revenues in the near future.