IBM, NetApp suffer as storage buyers shun mainstream suppliers

External disk storage sales

The rise of ODM sales to hyperscalers and the increase in server-attached storage have both affected external disk array sales. Revenues in this section of the market grew just 0.9 per cent, to $5.8bn.

EMC led with its $1.82bn, representing a 31.4 per cent share, and a 3.5 per cent growth rate.

NetApp was number two with $746m, a 12.9 per cent share, and a 0.3 per cent growth rate.

IBM and HP were both given third place by IDC, IBM's $591m showing a 9.9 per cent fall in the year, and HP's $561m a 2.7 per cent rise.

Hitachi and Dell are in joint fourth place, Hitachi revenues having fallen 9.4 per cent to $432m, and Dell's rising 2.9 per cent to $426m. The Others category grew 6.2 per cent to $1.23bn.

Here's a chart showing the sequential quarterly trends:

IDC quarterly external disk sales numbers. Click chart for a larger version.

We can see EMC has done best of all in the last three quarters.

The overall message from this tracker is that hyperscale buyers and server-attached storage sales are both going to limit the prospects for external disk array sales, and that's without the influence of all-flash arrays which are not seen in this IDC report.

That is a trio of market forces exerting downwards pressure on disk array sales.

Dare we say it but the golden age of storage array sales may be coming to a close. ®

* IDC Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker.