Total worldwide enterprise storage systems factory revenue grew 2,8% year over year to $9,1-billion during the third quarter of 2015 (3Q15), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker.
Total capacity shipments were up 31,5% year over year to 33,1 exabytes during the quarter. Revenue growth was strongest within the group of original design manufacturers (ODMs) that sell directly to hyperscale datacenters. This portion of the market was up 23,4% year over year to $1,3-billion.
Sales of server-based storage were up 9,9% during the quarter and accounted for $2,1 billion in revenue. External storage systems remained the largest market segment, but the $5,8-billion in sales represented a decline of -3,1% year over year.
“The enterprise storage market continued to follow a consistent trend in the third quarter of 2015,” says Liz Conner, research manager: storage at IDC. “Spending on traditional external arrays declined during the quarter as infrastructure refresh, coupled with the demand for software-defined storage and cloud-based storage, drove investments more heavily in server-based storage and hyperscale infrastructure.”
EMC finished in the top position within the total worldwide enterprise storage systems market, capturing 18,4% of all revenue. HP was the number two vendor with 16,3% share of revenue during the quarter while Dell finished 3Q15 in the number three position with a worldwide share of 9,9%. As a group, storage systems sales by original design manufacturers (ODMs) selling directly to hyperscale data centre customers accounted for 13,7% of global spending during the quarter.
EMC was the largest external storage systems supplier during the quarter. The company accounted for 29,1% of worldwide revenues. NetApp and HP finished the quarter in a statistical tie for the number two position with 11,3% and 10,4% share of worldwide revenues, respectively. IBM held a 9,3% share while Hitachi rounded out the top five with a 7,8% share of worldwide external storage revenue during the quarter.
The total All Flash Array (AFA) market generated $626,2-million in revenue during the quarter, up 60,8% year over year. The Hybrid Flash Array (HFA) segment of the market continues to be a significant part of the overall market with $2,4-billion in revenue and 26,5% market share.