Changes Coming In The External Storage Business
IBM and Hitachi continued to see a drop in external storage sales as Dell, HPE and NetApp revenue grew in the second quarter of 2021, according to research firm IDC.
IDC’s quarterly worldwide enterprise external OEM storage revenue is one of the basic barometers showing the health of the storage business. And for the second calendar quarter of 2021, it shows the industry to be a healthy one. IDC estimated second quarter sales reached $6.93 billion, up 9.7 percent over the $6.31 billion estimated for the second quarter 2020 sales. Things look even better in terms of volume, where IDC estimated total OEM storage capacity rose 27.9 percent over last year to reach 22.1 exabytes for the quarter.
However, the IDC worldwide enterprise external OEM storage revenue list has its limits. The obvious limit is that it includes external storage only, and does not include internal storage that companies like Dell and HPE ship with servers or PCs.
Even more important, the quarterly report does reflect the fact that business are changing how they purchase storage. As CRN noted in its 8 Emerging Data Storage Trends To Watch In 2021, storage decisions are more likely to be made based on what will help companies grow their business and generate profits, and not where and how the data is stored.
How did the individual vendors do? Click through the slideshow to not only see the IDC numbers, but more news and analysis from CRN. 1 23… 8NextRELATED TOPICS: