Thursday, December 3, 2009

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."

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