Earlier this month IDC released their Q1 2010 Worldwide Storage Systems Hardware Tracker, a well-established analysis of revenue and capacity shipments for the quarter. For the purposes of classification, IDC calls networked storage (as opposed to direct-attached storage) “Fabric Attached Storage” – which consists of Fibre Channel SAN, iSCSI SAN and NAS.
In Q1, Ethernet Storage (NAS plus iSCSI) revenue market share climbed to 43%, up from 39% in 2009, 32% in 2008 and 28% in 2007 – demonstrating continued market momentum. A more detailed breakdown is:
|
|
2007 |
2008 |
2009 |
Q1 2010 |
|
FC SAN |
72% |
68% |
61% |
57% |
|
iSCSI SAN |
6% |
10% |
13% |
14% |
|
NAS |
22% |
29% |
26% |
29% |
In terms of capacity market share, Ethernet Storage was 51% of the total PB shipped, up from 48% in 2009, 42% in 2008 and 37% in 2007, as shown in the following table.
|
|
2007 |
2008 |
2009 |
Q1 2010 |
|
FC SAN |
62% |
58% |
53% |
49% |
|
iSCSI SAN |
8% |
13% |
15% |
17% |
|
NAS |
29% |
29% |
32% |
34% |
So, the evidence is that the gains seem in the trough of the recession in 2008 and 2009 are continuing into the recovery. There seem to be three major factors driving this:
· Continuing maturity and acceptance of the technology for enterprise applications
· Companies’ willingness to try something new to reduce costs
· The continued rapid growth of unstructured data driving NAS capacity.
But that’s just my opinion. What’s your take?