Worldwide Disk Storage Market Experiences Strong Fourth Quarter Growth as 2007 Revenues Surge Higher, According to IDC

Business Wire, March 6, 2008

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posted 9.8% year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter of 2007 (4Q07) and totaling $5.3 billion, according to the IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker. For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market grew to $7.5 billion, up 7.6% from the prior year's fourth quarter. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reach 1,645 petabytes, growing 56.3%.

"The disk storage systems market exited 2007 strong, indicating that data storage remains a crucial component to the successful execution of enterprise business," said Brad Nisbet, research manager, IDC. "Despite the current, global economic uncertainties, the disk storage systems market is benefiting from a wide variety of drivers, ranging from the simple need to store ever-increasing volumes of business data to the more sophisticated objectives around consolidation, virtualization, and ease of management."

Total External Disk Storage Systems

For the fourth quarter, EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 22.5% revenue share, followed by IBM and HP with 17.7% and 12.3% revenue share, respectively. Dell, Hitachi, and Network Appliance ended the quarter in a statistical tie to round out the top 5 with 8.4%, 7.5% and 7.5% revenue share, respectively. Among the top 5 suppliers, Network Appliance and Hitachi posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth during 4Q07, with 19.3% and 15.5% growth, respectively.

Network Disk Storage Systems

The total network disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open SAN) posted 15.8% year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter to more than $3.9 billion. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total network storage market with 27.8% revenue share, followed by IBM and HP with 15.4% and 12.5% revenue share, respectively.

"iSCSI continues to be prove its popularity in the market, ending 2007 on the upswing with revenue growth over 70%," said Liz Conner, research analyst, IDC. "Customers are responding to the increased focus from vendors, as iSCSI is an attractive storage option not only for its simplicity and cost, but also for its ability to support a growing variety of applications and environments."

In the Open SAN market, which grew 17.2% year over year, EMC lead with 24.3% revenue share, followed by IBM with 17.5%. The NAS market grew 10.5% year over year, led by EMC with 41.2% revenue share and followed by Network Appliance with 28.3% share. The iSCSI SAN market continues to show strong momentum, posting 74.9% revenue growth compared to the prior year's quarter. Network Appliance continues to lead the market with 19.6% share, followed by EMC with 17.4% share.

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Total Disk Storage Systems Market

In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, IBM lead the market with 22.9% followed by HP with 18.1% revenue share. EMC maintained the third position with 16.0% revenue share.

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Full Year Results for Disk Storage Systems Market

For the full year, EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 21.6% revenue share, followed by IBM and HP with 14.5% and 13.2% revenue share, respectively. Dell, Hitachi, and Network Appliance ended the year in a statistical tie to round out the top 5 with 8.9%, 8.0% and 8.0% revenue share, respectively. Among the top 5 suppliers, Network Appliance and Dell posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth during 2007, with 19.2% and 17.0% growth, respectively.

For the full year, the total disk storage systems market posted 6.6% growth to $26.3 billion. In the total worldwide disk storage systems market, IBM and HP lead the market in statistical tie with 20.1% and 19.4% revenue share, respectively. EMC maintained the third position with 15.2% revenue share.

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Taxonomy Notes:

IDC defines a Disk Storage System as a set of storage elements, including controllers, cables, and (in some instances) host bus adapters, associated with three 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 disk storage systems sale. Revenue associated with the products to the end user is attributed to the seller (brand) of the product, not the manufacturer. Original equipment manufacturer (OEM) sales are not included in this study. In this study, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) sales do not reflect their OEM sales to Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard.

IDC's Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker is a quantitative tool for analyzing the global disk storage market on a quarterly basis. The Tracker includes quarterly shipments and revenues (both customer and factory), Terabytes, $/Gigabyte, Gigabyte/Unit, and Average Selling Value. Each criteria can be segmented by location, installation base, operating system, vendor, family, model, and region.