This article is more than 1 year old

Vendors look to flash as big ticket storage slumps in EMEA

Sea of woes laps at market

High-end storage system sales in EMEA dived in the second quarter, but flash-based systems showed double digit growth, as enterprises latched onto the falling prices for the technology.

Overall external storage systems sales were $1.63bn across EMEA in the three months to July 31, according to IDC, an 11 per cent drop on the previous year.

IDC identified currency swings, longer purchase cycles and economic instability as drivers for the slide, along with “increasing adoption of emerging technologies such as hyperconverged and software-defined storage solutions.

Against this background, it was high-end storage system sales that dragged the market down, with sales of big ticket systems plummeting by a third.

By contrast, flash storage systems showed double digit growth, while all flash arrays leaps by 113 per cent, fuelled by falling prices, more use cases, enterprise’s increased willingness to spend on new technologies. IDC predicted this would further accelerate in Western Europe as companies increasingly shifted to software-defined and flash-based data centre architecture.

"A combination of factors such as rapidly growing data volumes, shrinking IT budgets, and the compelling need to execute on digital transformation strategies is driving enterprises in Western Europe to drift away from traditional high-end storage systems and spend their storage budgets more strategically," said Archana Venkatraman, senior analyst, European storage research, IDC, in a statement.

"IDC is also seeing a wave of fragmentation within enterprises in Western Europe with IT choosing specific technologies, such as hyperconverged or flash storage, to suit specific workloads rather than investing in a single solution for all its storage needs."

EMC’s sales dropped 12.5 per cent, leaving it with with a 26.4 per cent share of the market, while HP’s sales slipped 14.5 per cent, giving it a 15.6 per cent share. NetApp was down 12.6 per cent and took 14.1 per cent of the market. Big Blue was the biggest loser, down 22.1 per cent and taking 13 per cent of the market. Fifth place Dell’s sales slipped 6.9 per cent, leaving it with market share of just under 7 per cent. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like