Despite economic problems in North
America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Japan, the worldwide
external controller-based (ECB) disk storage market exceeded expectations and
totaled $5 billion in the first quarter of 2011, according to Gartner.

 

This is a 14.1 percent increase from
revenue of $4.4 billion in the first quarter of 2010.

 

The Asia/Pacific and Latin America
regions grew 28.9 percent and 15.9 percent, respectively, followed by North
America at 12.9 percent, EMEA at 12.3 percent and Japan at 5.8 percent. With 30
percent year-over-year growth, the deployment of file-access ECB disk storage
systems shows strength in general-purpose enterprise infrastructures, as well
as disk-based backup and archiving.

 

Reflecting storage infrastructure
refreshments, coupled with expanded deployments in virtualized server
infrastructures, the larger block-access ECB disk storage market segment grew
10.6 percent year over year,” said Roger Cox, research vice president at
Gartner.

 

The block-access ECB disk storage
segment currently represents 79 percent of the total ECB disk storage market,”
Cox added.

 

EMC increased its
worldwide ECB disk storage revenue market share to 30.1 percent in the first
quarter of 2011. EMC revenue includes the Isilon acquisition, but excludes OEM
revenue from Dell and Fujitsu Technology Solutions.

 

NetApp experienced the strongest
growth among the top-tier vendors with a revenue increase of 34.4 year over
year.

 

NetApp’s efficiency and flexibility
features, along with its unified storage architecture, continued to resonate
with end users regardless of geographic region. While EMC maintained an almost
2.5 times larger market share than its closest rival, 35 percent of its
year-over-year growth in the first quarter of 2011 came from acquisitions made
during the past three years. Gains by its DS8000 series, XIV and the newly
released Storwize V7000 were offset by DS5000/4000/3000 series revenue
deterioration.

 

Though HP grew faster than the
industry average, gaining 0.2 percent market share, the accretive impact of the
3PAR acquisition was offset by EVA and P9000-series revenue declines. As Dell
disengages from EMC, its PS series (EqualLogic), MD3000 series and the
just-acquired Compellent gains were counterbalanced by the ongoing Dell:ECM
CX4/AX revenue shortfall.

 

Fujitsu is gaining increased
traction with its Eternus ECB disk storage systems, particularly in EMEA and
Japan. Most of Oracle’s year-over-year revenue decline was caused by its
terminated relationship with Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), but analysts said it
is also struggling to improve ZFS Storage Appliance revenue.

 

By TelecomLead.com Team
[email protected]