Total worldwide enterprise storage systems factory revenue was down 3.2% year-over-year and reached $8.8 billion in the third quarter of 2016 (3Q16), according analyst firm IDC.
Total capacity shipments were up 33.2% year-over-year to 44.3 exabytes during the quarter.
Revenue growth increased within the group of original design manufacturers (ODMs) that sell directly to hyperscale datacenters. This portion of the market was up 5.7% year-over-year to $1.3 billion.
Sales of server-based storage were relatively flat, at -0.5% during the quarter and accounted for $2.1 billion in revenue. External storage systems remained the largest market segment, but the $5.4 billion in sales represented a decline of 6.1% year-over-year.
“The enterprise storage market closed out the third quarter on a slight downturn, while continuing to adhere to familiar trends,” said Liz Conner, research manager for storage systems at IDC.
“Spending on traditional external arrays resumed its decline and spending on all-flash deployments continued to see good growth and helped to drive the overall market. Meanwhile the very nature of the hyperscale business leads to heavy fluctuations within the market segment, posting solid growth in 3Q16.”
Dell Technologies held the number 1 position within the total worldwide enterprise storage systems market, accounting for 25.5% of spending. HPE held the next position with a 15.5% share of revenue during the quarter.
NetApp, IBM, and Hitachi finished in a statistical tie for the third position, capturing 6.6%, 5.9% and 5.7% of global spending, respectively.
As a single group, storage systems sales by original design manufacturers (ODMs) selling directly to hyperscale datacenter customers accounted for 15.0% of global spending during the quarter.
Dell Technologies was the largest external enterprise storage systems supplier during the quarter, accounting for 31.6% of worldwide revenues.
NetApp and HPE finished in a statistical tie for the number 2 position with 10.9% and 10.2% of market share, respectively. Hitachi and IBM rounded out the top 5 in a statistical tie for the number 4 position with revenue shares of 9.1% and 8.6%, respectively.
The total All Flash Array (AFA) market generated over $1.1 billion in revenue during the quarter, up 61.0% year-over-year. The Hybrid Flash Array (HFA) segment of the market continues to be a significant part of the overall market with $2.1 billion in revenue and 24.1% market share.
