History 2001: WW Disk Storage Systems Revenue to Surpass $53 Billion in 2004

The disk storage systems industry will grow at double-digit levels, according to IDC. WW revenue in this market will increase at a CAGR of 12%, to $53.3 billion in 2004 from $28.4 billion in 1999.

“Several factors are contributing to the storage market’s overall growth,” said Charlotte Rancourt, director for IDC’s storage systems program. “One factor is the migration to networked storage, in which demand for nonstop access to information anytime/anywhere will continue to drive storage strategies and revenue growth.”

According to IDC, packaged applications such as customer relationship management, sales-force automation, and datamarts; Internet and Intranet investments by traditional brick and mortar companies; data-warehousing applications growth; the installation of storage capacity by storage service providers; and storage-intensive consumer applications such as imaging provide fuel for the storage market.

Additionally, as telephone and cable companies introduce infrastructure that can move large amounts of data efficiently and cost-effectively, new consumer markets will continue to drive demand for storage.

“The demand for graphic-intensive applications, the popularity of viewing digitized images at online auction sites, the migration from hard copy to soft copy, and demand for Internet-enabled distributed access to medical images and records on the Web demonstrate the continuing need for more storage capacity,” Rancourt said.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 160 on May 2001 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter