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The global disk-based storage market, rebounding from a big hiccup a year ago following Thailand floods that knocked out several key hard-disk drive manufacturing facilities, appears to be back on a healthy revenue track.
Industry researcher Gartner reported Sept. 7 that worldwide external controller-based disk storage vendor revenue amounted to $5.5 billion in the second quarter of 2012, a non-spectacular but nonetheless solid 6.7 percent increase from revenue of $5.1 billion in the second quarter a year ago.
The second quarter of 2012 was the 11th consecutive quarter of revenue growth in the sector, Gartner said, but it fell short of the researcher’s projection of a 7.9 percent year-over-year increase.
EMC, Oracle, Fujitsu Make Gains
EMC, Fujitsu and Oracle produced year-over-year revenue gains that outgrew the industry average.
EMC used its optimized-to-fit product strategy and new-gen VMAX storage arrays to increase its leading external controller-based disk-storage platform market share to 33.3 percent at $1.8 billion in revenue. Second-place IBM has 13.8 percent of the global market and third-place NetApp is at 11.1 percent.
Hewlett-Packard (9.4 percent), Hitachi Data Systems (8.7 percent) and Dell (7.3 percent) follow on the list.
Due to increased sales of its ZFS Storage Appliance, Oracle increased its year-over-year market share for the first time since it acquired Sun Microsystems in January 2010. By bringing in $105.5 million in the second quarter of 2012, Oracle is in seventh place, with 1.9 percent of the world market.
Fujitsu, which is benefiting from a purchasing rebound in Japan, is also improving its market share in Europe, where its Fujitsu Technology Solutions subsidiary produced improved results selling the Fujitsu Eternus-branded storage products. With $83 million in second-quarter revenue, Fujitsu is in eighth place with 1.5 percent of the world market.
External Pressures in Europe a Factor
“Although the hard-disk drive supply issues created by the October 2011 Thailand flood was no longer an impediment on meeting user demand, the economy in certain regions had a debilitating impact on vendor revenue in the second quarter of 2012,” said Gartner Vice President Roger Cox.
Cox said that the sluggish macroeconomic climate in Europe has affected sales there.
“In particular, the dour EMEA [Europe, Middle East and Africa] economy dampened year-over-year vendor revenue growth to just 2.6 percent against a forecast of 7.4 percent, while the slowing Asia-Pacific economy held year-over-year vendor revenue growth to 9 percent, 7.1 percentage points lower than Gartner’s forecast,” Cox said. “Only the North American region and Japan met or exceeded our expectations in the second quarter of 2012.”