NAS grows as external controller-based disk market slides

March 11, 2010 -- Unstructured data is becoming the reigning storage hog in the data center as the network-attached storage (NAS) market continues to grow, while the market for block-access, controller-based disk arrays continues to decline, according to the latest numbers from Gartner.

According to the research firm's latest report ("Quarterly Statistics: Disk Array Storage, All Regions, All Countries, 4Q09 Update") the external controller-based (ECB) disk storage market took a severe hit as the economic downturn whacked the market for an 8.6% year-over-year decline from $18 billion in 2008 to $16.3 billion in 2009 – the first annual decline for the market since 2002.

Gartner research vice president, Roger Cox, says the large monolithic/frame-based disk array market declined 21.1%, and for the first time since Gartner has been reporting on the ECB disk storage market, the segment represented less than 30% of the total market.

Cox says, "This result, in part, reflects the advancements that the lower-cost modular disk array systems have made in performance and capacity scalability, as well as robust data services associated with local and remote replication."

Gartner says unstructured data growth is boosting the NAS market as the segment grew 1.4% in '09, while the block-access modular ECB disk storage segment declined 2.8%. The special purpose disk archiving system segment experienced a big drop-off, falling 31.6% in revenue.

EMC remained the market leader in 2009, in part because of its leadership in the monolithic/frame-based, block access modular disk array and special-purpose disk archiving storage systems markets and the acquisition of Data Domain. IBM is second in market share, growing 11.9% in the fourth quarter, according to the report.

Gartner ECB disk storage reports reflect hardware-only revenue, as well as hardware revenue associated with financial leases and managed services.

On a related note, IDC recently released its latest Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker report that shows the external and internal disk array markets experienced the first year-over-year growth since the third quarter of 2008. The report also states that the NAS and iSCSI SAN array markets posted modest year-over-year growth (See Dave Simpson's latest blog: "Who are the top 5 array vendors?").

For more info on the ECB disk storage market, check out the full report on Gartner's website. The report includes vendor market share by data access method, price band, channel and operating system segmentation.

Gartner: External disk storage market recovering

December 3, 2009 -- Storage vendors have something to be thankful for as yet another indicator that the storage market is rebounding from the economic downturn has emerged. Gartner's latest research shows there are signs of recovery in the external controller-based disk storage market.

According to Gartner, worldwide external controller-based (ECB) disk storage revenue totaled more than $3.9 billion in the third quarter of 2009, a 7.3% decline from the same period last year.

In a statement from principal research analyst for Gartner's global Storage Quarterly Statistics program, Donna Taylor, the economic downturn's impact on the disk array storage market is slowly subsiding.

She says, "The year-over-year decline of 7.3% indicates that the economic downturn's impact on the disk array storage market is loosening its grip. The prior two quarters in 2009 showed declines in the double digits. This is good news for storage vendors, because it's the first sign of a light at the end of the tunnel."

EMC still leads the pack with 26.7% revenue market share. IBM takes second place followed by HP, Hitachi and Dell.

For the full list of market leaders, check out Gartner's website.

IDC issued its 2Q numbers in September, which revealed similar signs of recovery in both the storage hardware and software markets.

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker showed year-over-year growth in the second quarter of 2009 (2Q09) with revenues of $2.8 billion, representing –9.8% growth over the same quarter one year ago.

On the hardware front, worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posting a year-over-year decline of 18.3% in the 2Q09, totaling $4.1 billion, according to the IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker.

In addition, a recent survey of 47 enterprise VARs conducted by Robert W. Baird & Co. showed that VARs are upbeat about fourth quarter prospects. See Dave Simpson's blog "VARs upbeat about Q4."