+1.7% Y/Y in 1Q21 for WW Enterprise External OEM Storage Systems Revenue at $6.7 Billion

According to the International Data Corporation‘s Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker, global market revenue for enterprise external OEM storage systems grew 1.7% Y/Y to $6.7 billion during 1Q21.

Total external OEM storage capacity shipped was up 16.3% Y/Y to 19.9EB during the quarter.

1Q21 revenue generated by the group of original design manufacturers (ODMs) selling directly to hyperscale datacenters grew at 14.1% Y/Y to $5.6 billion, while capacity shipped grew 28.3% Y/Y to 70.2EB.

Enterprise storage capacity shipments for the entire market (external OEM + ODM direct + server-based storage) increased 20.6% to 118.8EB.

“After four quarters of market contraction,1FQ21 represented an important moment of recovery for the external storage systems market,” said Zsofia Madi-Szabo, research manager, infrastructure platforms and technologies. “While economies around the world are recovering from the prolonged impact of the global pandemic, geographic results for the external enterprise storage market were mixed. AsiaPac and EMEA lead the recovery with 11.5% and 4.9% respective increase in spending, while sales within the Americas fell by 5.4% during the quarter. Clearly it is going to take time for the global enterprise storage market to fully recover from the substantial negative impacts of Covid-19.”

Enterprise External OEM Storage Systems Results, by Company
Dell Technologies(a) was the largest external enterprise storage systems supplier during the quarter, accounting for 32.3% of WW revenue. NetApp was the second largest vendor, with 10.9% of revenue. HPE/H3C(b) was the third largest vendor with 9.4% of revenue. Hitachi and Huawei tied* for fourth place in the market with shares of 5.8% and 5.4%, respectively.

Flash-Based Storage Systems Highlights
The total AFA market generated $2.7 billion in revenue during the quarter, down 3.3% Y/Y. The hybrid flash array market was worth nearly $2.5 billion in revenue but was up 1.4% from 1Q20.

Regional External Storage System Highlights
On a geographic basis, storage revenue in China grew 34.9% Y/Y. Japan declined 11.5% in 1Q21 compared to 1Q20, while AsiaPac (excluding Japan and China) was up 2.1%. EMEA grew 4.9% in aggregate on a Y/Y basis. The United States was down 4.9% but Canada grew 12.9%. Latin America was the hardest hit region this quarter, down 28.2%.

Notes:
* Statistical tie when there is a difference of 1% or less in the share of revenues or shipments among 2 or more vendors.
(a) Dell Technologies represents the combined revenues for Dell and EMC.
(b) Due to the existing joint venture between HPE and H3C, IDC is reporting external market share on a global level for HPE and H3C as “HPE/H3C” starting from 2Q16. Per the JV agreement, Tsinghua Holdings subsidiary, Unisplendour Corporation, through a wholly-owned affiliate, purchased a 51% stake in H3C and HPE has a 49% ownership stake in the new company.

Taxonomy notes
IDC defines an enterprise storage system as a set of storage elements, including controllers, cables, and (in some instances) HBAs, associated with 3 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.