Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

EXTERNAL DISK STORAGE SYSTEMS MAINTAIN HEALTHY GROWTH IN 2Q04

According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues grew 8 percent year over year to $3.5 billion in the second quarter of 2004 (2Q04), driven by broad demand for networked storage. The total disk storage systems market also posted positive results, growing at 5 percent and marking the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth. Storage capacity continued to accelerate, growing 41.2 percent year over year to 275 petabytes shipped during the quarter.

"Worldwide spending this quarter reflects broadened investment in disk storage systems outside of the U.S., as both the Asia/Pacific region and Japan experienced the first signs of real growth since the market downturn began," said John McArthur, group vice president and general manager of information infrastructure research at IDC. "Even though the U.S. still represents more than 35 percent of the market, regional spending for disk storage systems is clearly on the rise and this bodes well for future quarters."

Total External Disk Storage Systems

EMC led the external disk storage systems market with 20.7 percent revenue share, driven by 19.5 percent year-over-year revenue growth for the quarter. HP, with a revenue decline of 8.3 percent year over year, came in second with 18.2 percent revenue share followed by IBM with 13.5 percent share and 4.7 percent revenue growth. While Network Appliance posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth among the top vendors during second quarter of 2004 with 26.5 percent growth, EMC and Dell had the largest share point gains from the previous year, with 2 and 1 points gained, respectively.

Networked Disk Storage Systems

The networked disk storage systems market (NAS combined with Open SAN) grew 17.9 percent year over year and surpassed the $2 billion mark for only the second time ever. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total networked storage market with 28.3 percent revenue share, followed by HP and IBM with 22.4 percent and 11.7 percent revenue share respectively.

Similar to last quarter, the No. 1 position in the Open SAN market (which includes iSCSI SAN) continues to be hotly contested. HP and EMC were again locked in a statistical tie for the top ranking in the market, which grew 18.6 percent year over year, with 27 percent revenue share apiece.

In the NAS market, which grew 15.2 percent year over year, Network Appliance led with 37.2 percent revenue share, followed by EMC with 35.2 percent share. HP posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth among the vendors tracked by IDC, with 64.2 percent growth during second quarter of 2004.

Although representing less than 1 percent of the networked disk storage systems market, the iSCSI SAN market posted more than 30 percent quarter-over-quarter revenue growth with Network Appliance leading the market with 44.6 percent share, followed by EMC with 28.1 percent share.

"Adoption of networked storage drove significant growth across the board in Q204," said Brad Nisbet, program manager of Disk Storage Systems Research at IDC. "Leading suppliers are expanding their product offerings to help bring lower cost networked storage solutions to a broader market, and this investment appears to be bearing fruit."

Total Disk Storage Systems Market -- Internal plus External

In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, HP maintained its lead with 23 percent revenue share followed by IBM with 20.3 percent share. EMC maintained the third position with 14.4 percent revenue share. EMC and Dell posted the largest year-over-year share gain among the top vendors during 2Q04, with 1.7 and 1 points gained, respectively.