Dive Brief:
- Data storage hardware sales continue to drop, declining 2.2% year-over-year to $10.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2015, according to research from International Data Corporation.
- EMC still leads in the traditional data storage market, followed by Dell, IBM and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. All but HP Enterprise saw sales fall in the fourth quarter of 2015.
- IDC also found that the market for flash-based storage is growing, and products that bundle storage capabilities into servers are becoming more popular as well.
Dive Insight:
The market for traditional storage hardware has continued to struggle because of competition from cloud computing service providers. Rather than purchasing hardware, enterprises can choose to rent both storage and computing services without having to maintain their own servers.
EMC, Dell and IBM saw sales of their storage systems fall 5.2%, 3.3% and 5%, respectively.
HP Enterprise, however, saw sales grow 7.9% to $1.6 billion. That rise could be attributed to the company’s new flash-based storage products. Flash-based products appear to be the one bright spot in the data storage hardware business. IDC analysts said sales of all-flash storage systems grew 72% year-over-year in the fourth quarter.
IDC also found that companies increasingly look for products that bundle storage capabilities into servers. Startups like Nutanix and Simplivity offer those type of solutions. But older tech organizations like Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are also getting into this space, with both companies having made new product announcements in recent weeks.
