Overall, IDC's latest quarterly enterprise data storage tracker reveals that both HP and EMC are agressively competing together for the same market lead, with EMC growing a bit faster than HP. NetApp is also growing too but still has a lot of time to catch up when compared to even HP, let alone EMC.
In the market which combines both internal disk array systems and externally-attached storage such as NAS and SAN systems, the total revenue number increased by almost 21 percent from 2009's second quarter, from US $5.6 billion to US $6.8 billion.
IDC's Global Quarterly Disk Array Tracker Report looks at the total disk storage market in terms of factory revenue along with the external disk storage (SAN and NAS) systems part of it as well.
On average, both EMC and HP tied for the first place with 19.4 percent and 19.1 percent of revenue respectively.
But while HP grew revenues at a fast 33.4 percent rate to US $1.3 billion, well outpacing the market as a whole, EMC grew at an even faster 40.7 percent rate to US $1.28 billion.
But EMC wasn't the fastest-growing supplier, since that feat went to NetApp with a strong 55.3 percent growth rate to US $571 million, giving it the number five ranking.
Numbers three and four, respectively, were IBM at US $1.072 billion and Dell at US $832 million who grew at 9.4 percent and 22.7 percent. Dell grew at just above the market rate while IBM under-shot a bit.
And the proportion of disk storage arrays sold by others, such as Oracle, Hitachi Data Systems and the remaining suppliers declined a lot, relatively speaking, with a growth rate of less than 1 percent, emphasizing the concentration of revenues in the hands of the top 5 enterprise data storage suppliers.
It's very clear now that EMC isn't present in the internal disk storage market at all, and its shared lead with HP is simply due to its overwhelming external disk storage market strength and HP's relative weakness for that same market segment.
But when IDC looked just at external disk storage revenues, the picture was very different. EMC had a strong lead over everyone else, including HP, with a 25.8 percent revenue share at US $1.29 billion, and the previously mentioned 40.7 per cent growth rate, only outstripped by NetApp's 55.3 per cent growth rate, taking NetApp to the number three position. Its US $571 million revenue giving it 11.4 per cent of that sector's revenue, a substantial increase from 2009's numbers IDC said.
For its part, IBM is in 2nd place with about US $680 million revenue and a 13.5 percent share of the storage market, about 47.8 percent that of EMC. IBM's revenue growth rate was less than 11 percent year-on-year, very much behind the total external segment growth rate of 20.4 percent.
But there are nevertheless two important elements which deserve our attention here. In the first quarter of last year, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) was number 6 with about a 9.4 percent revenue share of the market. However, it doesn't appear in today's IDC tracker tables at all, being lumped in with the 'others' category. That's strange. It hasn't grown as much as it needed to. Or did it?
Such a performance pales to almost nothing when compared to the almost total collapse in Sun Microsystems' storage revenues. Its factory revenues actually shrank from the second quarter of last year to this year's second quarter, with a negative change of -11.3 per cent.
For its part, Oracle has a very steep and long hill to climb to get its Sun enterprise storage operation back into the upper ranks of the industry. It's so far right now that it actually drops off the charts.
Secondly, and this is important, note that IBM isn't doing so well either, growing revenues more slowly than the whole market and perhaps needing stronger overall internal control and direction of its multi-product range in order to lift sales significantly and consistently.
Although this remains to be seen, it could also be overtaken by Dell in the total disk storage system market, and by NetApp in the external (SAN & NAS) disk storage market.
There's no doubt that IBM's presence in this segment is weakening rapidly and, if this pattern is repeated next quarter, it could become third in the sector behind a surging NetApp. HP statistically ties with NetApp for third place, with revenues of US $567 million, an 11.3 per cent share, and a growth rate of almost 21 percent, growing with the market in effect, but much, much less than EMC or NetApp.
Its products, the EVA and XP arrays, are just not as desirable as EMC's CLARiiON, Celerra and Symmetrix arrays and NetApp's FAS products.
And 3PAR, the company that was so much in the nesw lately, only has 0.58 per cent of the market and adding that to HP's share gives HP 11.88 per cent, surpassing NetApp but still a statistical tie in IDC terms. If HP could get its external storage revenues growing more strongly then it could become the undisputed top storage company.
But as it stands now, HP still has a lop-sided profile being strong in internal storage but weak in the external sector.
For its part, Dell has the 5th rank in the external sector with about $472 million in revenues, a 9.4 percent market share, and a growth rate of 17 per cent, lower than the external disk storage market as a whole.
It leads in iSCSI SAN system with an almost 33 percent market share but it's weak anywhere else. Since it has recently extended its EMC reselling agreement to include Celerra and Data Domain systems that may well change. Time will tell.
It has very little high-end storage market presence and its fourth position in the overall disk storage market will be improved if it sells lots more mid-range external storage and more servers with storage inside them.
It's easier now to understand why Dell was so keen in wanting to acquire 3Par so much. Now that HP has won the battle at $33 a share, Dell has to find other solutions if it wants to be part of the game in an meaningful way.
However, some in the IT community could ask why Dell hasn't been doing better with its CLARiiON systems though.
For the past two years, EMC has been doing pretty good with those servers.
It will be interesting to see in the coming months who this whole thing pans out, and who will be number one in this aspiring new segment of the IT industry.