ConnectIT 9-September-2008 Total disk storage systems market grows 10.9% in Q2 by Chris Talbot Revenue for external disk storage systems on a worldwide bases increased 16.7 percent years-over-year to top $5.1 billion (U.S.) in the second quarter of 2008, according to the latest IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker report. The total disk storage systems market grew 10.9 percent year-over-year to $6.9 billion, with total disk storage systems capacity reaching 1,777 petabytes, up 43.7 percent year-over-year. "Despite concerns about a 2008 slowdown in IT spending, external disk storage systems spending experienced strong growth in the first half of 2008," said Natalya Yezhkova, research manager for storage systems at IDC, in a statement. "The second quarter of the year was remarkable, not only because it is the highest growth in two years, but also because of the distribution of this growth across different market segments. The ability of vendors to meet a variety of needs among customers with a diversity of storage products and initiatives led to solid growth across all installation environments, even in those that declined over the past several quarters." EMC continued to lead the external disk storage systems market with 21.7 percent of the revenue share, followed by IBM at 13.1 percent, HP at 12.9 percent, Dell at 9.2 percent, NetApp at eight percent and Hitachi at 7.6 percent. Of the top five suppliers, EMC and NetApp posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth at 19.7 percent and 17.2 percent, respectively. The total network disk storage market grew 22 percent year-over-year to more than $3.8 billion in revenue, with EMC maintaining its leadership with 26.4 percent of revenue share, followed by HP at 12.9 percent. The Open SAN market grew 15.5 percent year-over-year, with EMC leading with 23.9 percent of revenue share, followed by HP at 16.7 percent. The NAS market experienced year-over-year growth of 23.5 percent, with EMC leading with 39.8 percent of revenue share, followed by NetApp at 28.5 percent. The iSCSI SAN market showed year-over-year revenue growth of 93.9 percent, with Dell leading the market (due to its acquisition of EqualLogic) with 32.8 percent of the revenue share, followed by NetApp at 14.6 percent and EMC at 14.1 percent. The total worldwide disk storage systems market ended the quarter with HP earning 18.1 percent of the total revenue share and IBM earning 17.7 percent of the revenue share, followed by EMC at 15.9 percent, Dell at 10 percent and Sun Microsystems at 7.1 percent.