Gartner: Appetite for storage beats the slump

While the wider world felt the bite of the recession, the world of storage continued to enjoy growth last year, according to analysts at Gartner.

Global revenue from external controller-based storage enjoyed year-on-year growth of 11.3 percent last year, up from $16.2bn (£11.4bn) to $18bn, Gartner said.

EMC remained the leader in the storage market with 25 percent market share and revenues that grew from $4bn in 2007 to $4.5bn in 2008, representing year-on-year growth of 11.5 percent.

In descending order, the top seven storage vendors are EMC, IBM, HP, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), Dell, Network Appliances and Sun.

In the fourth quarter of 2008, Dell showed the strongest growth, with storage revenue up 11.3 percent from $379m to $422m.

Sun and IBM were the only vendors to see a drop in their storage-business revenues in the fourth quarter. Sun's storage revenue in the quarter fell by 4.1 percent, while IBM's fell by 8.1 percent.

"Storage just continues to beat the market and will continue to grow," said Jon Collins, an analyst with Freeform Dynamics. "There is no recession in storage for many reasons, but the two main ones are: the continuing growth of rich media, and compliance. As long as we need to keep records of everything, the need for more storage will always be with us."