Worldwide Enterprise Storage Market Stays Flat in 1Q17

Total worldwide enterprise storage systems factory revenue was down 0.5% year over year and reached $9.2 billion in the first quarter of 2017 (1Q17), according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker. Total capacity shipments were up 41.4% year over year to 50.1 exabytes during the quarter.

Revenue growth increased within the group of original design manufacturers (ODMs) that sell directly to hyperscale datacenters. This portion of the market was up 78.2% year over year to $1.2 billion. Sales of server-based storage were down 13.7% during the quarter and accounted for $2.7 billion in revenue. External storage systems remained the largest market segment, but the $5.2 billion in sales represented a modest decline of 2.8% year over year.

"The enterprise storage market closed out the first quarter relatively flat, yet adhered to a familiar pattern," said Liz Conner, research manager, Storage Systems. "Spending on traditional external arrays continues to slowly shrink while spending on all-flash deployments once again posted strong growth and helped to drive the overall market. Meanwhile the very nature of the hyperscale business leads to heavy fluctuations within the market segment, displaying solid growth in 1Q17.

Dell held the number 1 position within the total worldwide enterprise storage systems market, accounting for 21.5% of spending. HPE held the next position with a 20.3% share of revenue during the quarter. HPE's share and year-over-year growth rate includes revenues from the H3C joint venture in China that began in May of 2016; as a result, the reported HPE/New H3C Group combines storage revenue for both companies globally.

NetApp finished third with 8.0% market share. Hitachi and IBM finished in a statistical tie for the fourth position, each capturing 5.0% of global spending. As a single group, storage systems sales by original design manufacturers (ODMs) selling directly to hyperscale datacenter customers accounted for 13.2% of global spending during the quarter.

Dell was the largest external enterprise storage systems supplier during the quarter, accounting for 27.2% of worldwide revenues. NetApp finished in the number 2 position and HPE in the number 3 position with 14.0% and 9.7% of market share, respectively. Hitachi and IBM rounded out the top 5 in a statistical tie for the number 4 position with revenue shares of 8.6% and 8.4%, respectively.