The worldside enterprise NAS market is forecast to grow at a rate of 14.6% per year between 2011-2015, according to a report by TechNavio.

The main factor contributing to this market growth is the increasing speed and access to multihost file systems and emerging adoption of NAS/SAN hybrid.

TechNavio networking team analyst said the demand for low-end network attached storage (NAS) is increasing rapidly.

"There is enormous demand from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for backup and file sharing services without the overhead costs associated with a general purpose server," the analyst said.

"NAS products meet these and other data storage requirements in the form of inexpensive, very powerful, and almost zero-cost installation and maintenance solutions. Enterprises in developing countries are interested in these devices.

The report, report, the Global Enterprise NAS Market 2011-2015, covers the Americas, and the EMEA and APAC regions and includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market like EMC Corporation, NetApp, IBM Corporation and HP.

TechNavio said a NAS application is generally less expensive to implement than an SAN since filers can be integrated with the existing network infrastructure.

According to the report, though a separate local area network (LAN) device is deployed for NAS traffic, its essential components are still economical, so the reduced cost associated with those applications acts as a major driver for this market.