EMC leads as disk storage market continues to climb in 2011

Sales of disk storage hardware climbed 10.2 per cent in the past quarter on the strength of surging external storage sales, according to analyst firm IDC.

The company said in its quarterly disk storage systems tracker report that disk storage sales generated $7.5bn in revenues in the second quarter. External storage systems account for $5.6bn, an increase of 12.2 per cent on the year.

EMC remained the top vendor with a 26 per cent jump in revenues and a 21.6 per cent market share. The company was particularly strong in the external storage space, claiming 28.7 per cent of the market.

"External storage systems revenue increased solidly in the second quarter, with all segments experiencing double-digit gains as end-user investment in new technology continued," said IDC storage systems senior research analyst Liz Conner.

"New vendor offerings around virtualisation, gig data and cloud computing, coupled with less restrictive IT budgets, have contributed to this growth."

HP claimed the second spot with 19.2 per cent of the market, followed by IBM with 15.8 per cent and a 13.4 per cent increase in external storage revenues.

NetApp, meanwhile, saw its revenues jump 25.7 per cent on the quarter to gain 12.8 per cent of the external storage market and 13.3 per cent of external Raid sales.