IBM today announced the fastest external disk storage systems revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2005 among the top three external disk storage vendors, according to data released by IDC. Growing 47 percent worldwide, IBM outpaced both EMC and Hewlett-Packard.
The report also indicates that IBM outgrew EMC and HP for the year, with IBM external disk storage systems achieving 24 percent full year revenue growth as measured by IDC. IBM was also the only one of the three top vendors to increase its revenue share year over year, and saw the largest fourth quarter revenue share increase of any individual vendor reported by IDC.
“There’s a sea change occurring in the storage industry, causing customers to increasingly consider and adopt IBM’s storage technology as they are faced with escalating requirements to capture and store data,” said Andy Monshaw, general manager of IBM Storage. “One key driver is our belief in open systems that free customers from the proprietary lock of a single vendor. IBM’s Virtualization Engine offerings, including SAN Volume Controller, are designed to help release customers from vendor lock-in by creating the flexibility to build open storage environments.”
IBM achieved strong revenue growth in all regions for the fourth quarter of 2005, with external disk storage revenue growing by more than 40 percent year to year in North America, Western Europe and Asia-Pacific, where it tied for number one in market share, as measured by IDC. IBM also saw an increase of more than 40 percent in the United States, as well as showing worldwide revenue growth in all price bands. This included a 94 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2004 to the fourth quarter of 2005 in the highest-level price bands , representing enterprise-class storage systems.
Driven by compliance regulations and the benefits of Information on Demand, businesses are turning to IBM for their storage needs. Recent IBM customer wins include University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), University of Wyoming, Palm Beach Community College and Schwenk Kement KG. Also in the fourth quarter, IBM announced that its TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller Solution (SVC) and IBM TotalStorage DS8300 both achieved tops scores for performance as measured by the Storage Performance Council’s latest benchmark, SPC-2.(3)
