IDC says global market revenue for enterprise external OEM storage systems grew 1.7% year over year to $6.7 billion during the first quarter of 2021 (1Q21). Total external OEM storage capacity shipped was up 16.3% year over year to 19.9 exabytes during the quarter.
1Q21 revenue generated by the group of original design manufacturers (ODMs) selling directly to hyperscale datacentres grew at 14.1% year over year to $5.6 billion, while capacity shipped grew 28.3% year over year to 70.2 exabytes.
Enterprise storage capacity shipments for the entire market (External OEM + ODM Direct + Server-Based Storage) increased 20.6% to 118.8 exabytes.
"After four quarters of market contraction, the first quarter of 2021 represented an important moment of recovery for the external storage systems market," said Zsofia Madi-Szabo, research manager, Infrastructure Platforms and Technologies at IDC.
"While economies around the world are recovering from the prolonged impact of the global pandemic, geographic results for the external enterprise storage market were mixed."
"Storage spending in Asia/Pacific grew 11.5%. Clearly, it is going to take time for the global enterprise storage market to fully recover from the substantial negative impacts of COVID-19," she continued.
Enterprise external OEM storage systems results, by company
Dell Technologies was the largest external enterprise storage systems supplier during the quarter, accounting for 32.3% of worldwide revenue. NetApp was the second largest vendor during the quarter, with 10.9% of revenue. HPE/H3C was the third largest vendor with 9.4% of revenue. Hitachi and Huawei tied for fourth place in the market with shares of 5.8% and 5.4%, respectively.
Flash-based storage systems highlights
The total All Flash Array (AFA) market generated $2.7 billion in revenue during the quarter, down 3.3% year over year. The Hybrid Flash Array (HFA) market was worth nearly $2.5 billion in revenue but was up 1.4% from the year ago quarter.
Alex Zhang, vice president of IT Product Line at Huawei, says storage is often associated with flash storage upgrade and an exponential increase in unstructured data, which is found in various vertical industries including financial services, governments, telecommunication operators, and more.
“Under the guidance of global carbon neutrality and emission peak regulations, emphasis on green goals to achieve energy saving targets will be key to enterprises as they face exponential growth in data and data storage needs,” he continued.
Regional external storage system highlights
On a geographic basis, storage revenue in China grew 34.9% year over year. Japan declined 11.5% in 1Q21 compared to 1Q20, while Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China) was up 2.1%.
Opportunities in Asia-Pacific in 2021
Acknowledging that customers’ data is increasingly becoming distributed and diverse, Sanjay Rohatgi, senior vice president and general manager, APAC at NetApp, observed a clear need for organizations across verticals to move or access the data they need, as seamlessly and cost-efficiently as possible no matter they are on-prem or across multiple clouds.
“To that end, we have been helping our customers build the data fabric that simplifies and integrates data management, provide them with innovations that streamline the acquisition and deployment of a hybrid cloud, and enable them to manage their business with financial prudence by easily dividing IT expenses into CapEx or OpEx with offerings such as the Keystone Flex Subscription,” he added.
A sentiment echoed by Huawei’s Zhang who added that data has always been a core asset to the pursuit of enterprise business continuity.
“As enterprises continue to embrace digital transformation, upgrading to all flash storage data centres has become essential to ensure data security, reliability, ensure high performance, low latency, and achieve energy saving goals,” he added.
Driving sales growth
Rohatgi expects that the demand for storage solutions that can help organizations better harness the power of hybrid cloud will continue to grow.
For his part, Zhang said the post-pandemic economic recovery and acceleration of industry digital transformation will continue to fuel the continuous growth of the external storage market in 2021.
“At Huawei, we will continue to accelerate the development of storage solutions and lead the growth of the external storage segment with our comprehensive suite of products and solutions,” he continued.
