The increasing demand for midrange storage systems has helped the external storage market in the Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) region to grow 11.6% during 2012, according to a new report from IDC.
IDC’s Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker revealed that external storage shipments generated revenues of about $2.01bn in 2012 that represents a total capacity of 1,189.6PB, up 33.9% compared to 2011.
IDC CEMA region storage systems research manager Pavel Roland said if 2011 is considered to be the year of high-end storage in the region, then 2012 was the year of the midrange applications.
"There is a notable shift to lower price bands by enterprise users on one side, and enterprise capabilities previously only available in high-end systems, now offered by vendors at midrange prices, on the other," Roland said.
Additionally, the report revealed that the midrange storage class shipments made up 55% share of overall market value.
EMC reported faster revenue growth year-on-year compared to the market average to capture a market value share of 38.6%, while IBM and HP captured about 17.1% and 16.6% of the global external storage market.
IBM’s revenues during the year rose by 7.9% over 2011, while HP’s revenue remained stagnant as it experienced losses compared to the earlier year.
HP faced losses due to phasing out of the EVA systems and less success of its high-end XP family, while its 3PAR system performed better, but it failed to give the company expected growth, IDC said.
In addition, the CEMA external storage market saw strong demand from large and medium-sized businesses, as well as from the public sector for the year.
IDC CEMA storage systems research analyst, Marina Kostova, said CIS countries invested heavily in public storage projects.
"Many CEMA organisations from the enterprise segment transitioned from dedicated to scalable unified storage solutions, which were already a standard proposition in all major vendors’ portfolios," Kostova said.
