Enterprise Storage Systems Market Revenue Grew 7.4 Percent in 4Q18

Vendor revenue in the worldwide enterprise storage systems market increased 7.4% year over year to $14.5 billion during the fourth quarter of 2018 (4Q18), according to IDC. Total capacity shipments were up 1.7% year over year to 92.5 exabytes during the quarter.

Revenue generated by the group of original design manufacturers (ODMs) selling directly to hyperscale datacenters declined 1.5% year over year in 4Q18 to $2.7 billion. This represents 18.8% of total enterprise storage investments during the quarter. Sales of server-based storage increased 4.7% year over year to just under $4.1 billion in revenue. This represents 28.1% of total enterprise storage investments. The external storage systems market was worth roughly $7.7 billion during the quarter, up 12.5% from 4Q17.

Dell was the largest supplier for the quarter, accounting for 20.6% of total worldwide enterprise storage systems revenue and growing 14.8% year over year. HPE/New H3C Group was the second largest supplier with an 18.0% share on growth of 0.6%. NetApp generated a 5.8% share of total revenue, statistically tying for the number three spot with IBM, which captured 4.8% market share.

Huawei, Lenovo and Hitachi all statistically tied for the number 5 position with shares of 4.0%, 3.5%, and 3.3% respectively. As a single group, storage systems sales by ODMs directly to hyperscale datacenter customers accounted for 18.8% of global spending during the quarter, down 1.5% against 4Q17.

Dell was the largest external enterprise storage systems supplier during the quarter, accounting for 30.3% of worldwide revenue. NetApp and HPE/New H3C Group finished statistically tied for the number 2 position with a 10.9% and 10.6% share of revenue during the quarter respectively. IBM was the fourth largest with 8.9% share, while Hitachi and Huawei rounded out the top 5 in a statistical tie with 6.0% and 5.7% market share.