EMEA purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) vendor revenues decreased 4% year over year to reach $217,5-million in the third quarter of 2015, according to International Data Corporation’s (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Purpose-Built Backup Appliance Tracker.
“Growth in the EMEA PBBA market declined in the third quarter of 2015 due to euro/dollar exchange rate headwinds, a slowdown in emerging markets, and the gradual move from hardware-centric PBBA on-premises to hybrid/gateway systems,” says Jimena Sisa, senior research analyst: European Storage at IDC. “Organizations are starting to assess cloud deployments, whether they be backup as a service or a hybrid appliance in order to reduce cost, improve response time, and make the business more agile.”
Sisa said the weak performance of the Western European market this quarter, at -1% in vendor revenue, was mainly due to declines at some of the major players. The overall capacity in EMEA increased 9,5% to 199 petabytes, with Western Europe accounting for 69% of the total. PBBAs are the most popular products used by organizations seeking to meet their backup and data protection requirements.
“Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa [CEMA] PBBA revenue declined 11.2% year over year to $58.8 million in the third quarter of 2015,” says Marina Kostova, senior research analyst: storage systems at IDC CEMA. “This trend was seen in both subregions, Central and Eastern Europe [CEE] and the Middle East and Africa [MEA], owing to a general business weakness at some major storage vendors in the region which also affected their PBBA portfolios, as well as project delays in the government sector and in some other major verticals. However, with cloud-based backup solutions still having only a negligible presence, the majority of PBBA vendors recorded stable growth and expanded their customer base in the region.”
Total PBBA mainframe system factory revenue declined 17% year over year in 3Q15, with revenues reaching $19,3-million. The open system market also declined, by 3%, in the same period.