IT managers still hungry for storage

The worldwide demand for storage capacity continues to accelerate rapidly, with the latest research from analyst IDC showing a 41.2 per cent year-over-year increase. Some 275 petabytes were shipped during the second quarter of 2004.

Growing demand for networked storage pushed global sales of external disk storage systems by eight per cent to $3.5bn in the quarter, according to data from IDC.

The analyst also indicated that the overall disk storage systems market posted positive results, growing at five per cent and marking the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth.

"Even though the US still represents more than 35 per cent of the market, regional spending for disk storage systems is clearly on the rise and this bodes well for future quarters," said John McArthur, a group vice president at IDC, in a statement.

EMC led the external disk storage systems market with 20.7 per cent revenue share, driven by 19.5 per cent revenue growth for the quarter.

HP, with a revenue decline of 8.3 per cent year over year, came in second with 18.2 per cent revenue share, followed by IBM with 13.5 per cent share and 4.7 per cent revenue growth.

The networked disk storage systems market, which combines network attached storage (Nas) with open storage area networks (Sans), grew 17.9 per cent to surpass the $2bn mark for only the second time ever.

IDC said that EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total networked storage market with 28.3 per cent revenue share, followed by HP and IBM with 22.4 per cent and 11.7 per cent respectively.

The study also found that competition for the number one 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 per cent year over year, with 27 per cent revenue share apiece.

In the Nas market, which grew 15.2 per cent year over year, Network Appliance led with 37.2 per cent revenue share, followed by EMC with 35.2 per cent.