Liz Conner, IDC: Q3 2011 Worldwide External Disk Storage Systems Post Double Digit Growth for Sixth Consecutive Quarter

December 5, 2011

Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posted year-over-year growth of 10.8%, totaling just under $5.8 billion, in the third quarter of 2011 (3Q11).

For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market grew to $7.6 billion in revenues, representing 8.5% growth from the prior year's third quarter. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reach 5,429 petabytes, growing 30.7% year over year.

"The third quarter of 2011 was a strong quarter for Enterprise Storage, posting solid growth in factory revenue and signaling a return to 'business as normal'," said Liz Conner, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. "The trend of increased spending during the economic recovery period, specifically on high-end systems, has started to draw to a close. As IDC predicted, year-over-year growth has started to slow and is now approaching pre-economic crisis levels."

Total External Disk Storage Systems
EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 28.6% revenue share in the third quarter, followed by IBM and NetApp tied* for second with 12.7% and 12.1% market share respectively. HP ended the quarter in fourth position, with 11.3%. Hitachi and Dell finished in a tie* for fifth with 8.8% and 8.0% market share respectively.

Open Networked Disk Storage Systems
The total open networked disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open / iSCSI SAN) grew 12.3% year over year in the third quarter to just shy of $4.9 billion in revenues. EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total open networked storage market with 31.3% revenue share, followed by NetApp with a 14.4% revenue share.

In the Open SAN market, which grew 16.1% year over year, EMC was the leading vendor with 25.3% revenue share, followed by IBM in second and HP in third with 15.4% and 14.0% share, respectively.

The NAS market grew 3.5% year over year, led by EMC with 46.7% revenue share and followed by NetApp with 30.9% share. The iSCSI SAN market continues to show strong growth, posting 19.5% revenue growth compared to the prior year's quarter. Dell led the market with 30.3% revenue share, followed by EMC in second with 19.2% and HP in third with 14.0% market share.

"Strong growth in the midrange segment (price bands 6 & 7, $50K-149.99K) helped the overall growth in the third quarter of 2011" said Amita Potnis, senior research analyst, Storage Systems. "The trend to buy modular systems offering enterprise level functionality, such as scale-out architectures, tiering, data deduplication, etc. continues."

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide External Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue, Third Quarter of 2011 (Revenues are in Millions)

Vendor	3Q11 Revenue	3Q11 Market Share	3Q10 Revenue	3Q10 Market Share	3Q11/3Q10 Revenue Growth
1. EMC	$1,649	28.6%	$1,351	25.9%	22.0%
T2. IBM*	$735	12.7%	$667	12.8%	10.2%
T2. NetApp*	$700	12.1%	$601	11.5%	16.5%
4. HP	$651	11.3%	$575	11.0%	13.1%
T5. Hitachi*	$505	8.8%	$414	8.0%	22.1%
T5. Dell*	$459	8.0%	$471	9.0%	-2.6%
Others	$1,069	18.5%	$1,128	21.7%	-5.2%
All Vendors	$5,767	100.0%	$5,207	100.0%	10.8%

Source: IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker, December 2, 2011

Notes:

• Starting in Q4 2010, HP is reported as the combined entity of HP and 3PAR.
• Starting in Q1 2011, EMC is reported as the combined entity of EMC and Isilon.
• Starting in Q1 2011, Dell is reported as the combined entity of Dell and Compellent.
• * IDC declares a statistical tie in the worldwide disk storage market when there is less than one percent difference in the factory revenues of two or more vendors.

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.