Enterprise-grade external disk storage systems (EDSS) factory revenue in Western Europe reported a year-on-year growth of 1.2 % to $1.35bn in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to IDC.
The report revealed that major markets triggered growth in Western European External Disk Storage Systems whhile vendors suffered in budget constrained Italy.
While taking into account the fluctuation in currency exchange rates, quarterly growth of external disk storage systems was 3.2 % in teh region.
IDC’s European Storage Group research director Donna Taylor said regional growth for the quarter was largely driven by the expansion of major markets including the UK, Germany and France and market momentum in the Nordic region.
"However, these positive developments were offset by dismal performance in the Italian and Belgian markets, hitting hard on some of the tier 1 vendors for large enterprises and government organizations," Donna added.
IDC’s data confirmed that hard disk drive pricing and supply had a negative impact on the capacity shipment growth, while improvements in the pricing environment and supply chain have been faster than expected, pointing towards acceleration in capacity growth once again.
With higher disk prices and shortages in high-capacity enterprise grade drives, newly deployed enterprise disk storage systems capacity in Western Europe grew only 9.7 % in the first quarter of 2012 over the corresponding quarter last year.
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High-end storage deployments with selling price of over $250k, declined by 10% for the quarter after a strong fourth quarter in 2011 and widespread budget freezes in markets like Italy and Belgium.
The figures show a drop in EMC and IBM market shares hit by a combination of weakness in their customer base and competitive dynamics, while Hitachi Data Systems managed to grow its high-end business dynamically with the VSP and HP ramped up its 3Par efforts and grew XP family sales.
EMC executed well against its broad portfolio and found additional sales with the VNX/VNXe family, while IBM’s gains were led by V7000.
IDC storage research analyst Daniel Bizo overall, NetApp once again posted the highest growth out of all the top vendors for the quarter, closing in on EMC’s primary storage systems business in Western Europe.
"While the second position was hotly contested by NetApp, HP, and IBM throughout last year, that is no longer the case, as the three vendors are distantly spread out in second, third and, fourth place," he added.
Midrange systems between $25k and 250k, enjoyed some very strong uptake for the quarter driven by a line-up of new, enhanced midrange products, stimulating demand and shifting money from both entry-level and high-end into the category.
The market share leader for midrange systems, NetApp, also expanded its sales, albeit at a slower pace against an already very strong quarter a year ago.
