IDC: AP external disk storage demand surged in first half of 2005

The total market for disk storage systems raked in revenues of US$1.13 billion, an increase of 14.7 percent over the first half of 2004. Of this, external storage accounted for 80 percent of the revenue. The greater availability and acceptance of larger capacity ATA disk drives, coupled with a steady fall in the dollar price per gigabyte for fibre channel disks have led to a trend of companies deploying high capacity external storage for rarely accessed data, and disk-to-disk-tape backup and archive.

New external capacity installed by users in the region in the first half of 2005 was 60,587 terabytes, almost double that of 2004's 30,781 terabytes.

"IDC expects to see continuing strong demand for additional capacity throughout 2005, with growth in the mid-range market partially compensating for the lower demand experienced by high-end systems," says Graham Penn, associate vice president, IDC Asia/Pacific Storage Research.

"A key contributing factor is that organizations are increasingly networking their storage resources to expand capacity and add flexibility to existing storage installations, to benefit from increased asset utilization."

The research firm estimates that external disk storage systems connected to servers via a storage area network accounted for 72.4 percent of disk storage systems revenue in the first half of 2005. In contrast, network attached storage and direct attached storage accounted for 9.3 percent and 18.2 percent of the revenue respectively.

China remains as the dominant country market in the region. External disk storage revenue in the country reached US$259.8 million in the half year, accounting for 28.7 percent of the total APEJ market. The highest growth rates recorded over the corresponding period in 2004 in the APEJ region came from the relatively small markets in Indonesia (46.1 percent), Thailand (40.1 percent) and New Zealand (39.3 percent), says IDC.

HP continues to be the external disk storage systems market leader in the region with a share of 24.5 percent, with closest competitor EMC trailing it by just 1.4 percent. IBM and Dell also gained market share across the region in 2005, at 18.9 percent and 8.5 percent respectively.