Sales of external disk storage systems continue to boom with a fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue gains, according to market research firm IDC.
In its Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, IDC reported that in the first quarter of this year system revenue totalled $5.6 billion. That represents 13.2 per cent year-over-year growth.
Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reach 4,956 petabytes in the quarter, representing a 46.3 per cent increase from the same period in 2010.
“The worldwide disk storage market is off to a strong start in 2011,” Amita Potnis, a senior research analyst for storage systems at IDC, said in a statement. “Although the market declined sequentially in the first quarter, due to a seasonal budget flush in Q4, year-over-year growth can be seen as end-users are taking advantage of easing budget constraints while adopting new capabilities available in the market.”
EMC continued to lead the pack in sales, IDC said, with 27.3 per cent revenue share in the quarter, followed by NetApp and IBM with 13.5 per cent and 12.2 per cent, respectively. HP finished the quarter in fourth place, with 10.5 per cent of the revenue share; Hitachi was fifth with nine per cent.
The IP-based storage market also saw strong growth. Network-Attached Storage (NAS) sales continued to soar with a 27.1 per cent year-over-year growth in revenues. EMC also continued to lead that market, with 48.8% of revenue share. NetApp was nxt with 30.8 per cent of the share.
The Internet-SCSI (iSCSI) SAN market posted 23 per cent revenue growth compared to the first quarter in 2010; Dell led that market with 32.9 per cent revenue share. HP lead EMC slightly in iSCSI SAN sales with 14.4 per cent and 14.2 per cent market share, respectively.
EMC maintained its leadership in the total open networked storage market with 30.8 per cent revenue share, followed by NetApp with a 16.1 per cent revenue share.
In the Open SAN market, which grew 13.4 per cent year over year, EMC also led, with 22.7 per cent revenue share, followed by IBM and HP with 14.8 per cent and 13.4 per cent, respectively.
IDC also breaks out a category that it calls “open networked disk storage,” which includes NAS with “open” iSCSI. That combined market grew 17.3 per cent in the first quarter to $4.7 billion in revenues.