EMC number one in external RAID storage revenue for 8th consecutive year, analyst firm reports

EMC Corporation, the world leader in information storage and management, led in worldwide external RAID storage revenue for the eighth consecutive year in 2004.

According to a new report from IDC, EMC also regained its lead in worldwide revenue for all external disk storage systems last year [a]. In the fourth quarter, number one EMC grew its portion of that market for the sixth consecutive quarter, gaining more share than any of the next six largest suppliers .

Howard Elias, EMC executive vice-president, Corporate Marketing and Office of Technology, said: "EMC`s market momentum in 2004 speaks to the investment we continue to make in developing and delivering industry-leading products, the strength of our execution, the soundness of our strategy and, most of all, it speaks to the commitment we have made innovating for customer success. During the year our broad portfolio of solutions continued to catch the attention of customers eager to leverage best-of-breed tiered networked storage systems, software and services for their information lifecycle management strategies."

While the EMC Symmetrix family of storage systems continued to set the high-end standard in 2004, its midrange systems accelerated EMC`s share gains throughout the year. As EMC reported in January, revenue from EMC CLARiiON, Centera and Celerra networked storage systems grew 46% during the year, nearly ten-fold the rate of the total external disk storage systems market in 2004, which grew 4.7% according to IDC.

In 2004 EMC was number one in external disk storage systems revenue with 21.1% share, growing revenue approximately four times faster than the total market and recapturing the top spot for the full year from Hewlett-Packard, which became the revenue leader in 2002 when it acquired Compaq. According to IDC, EMC first took over number one on a quarterly basis in the first quarter of 2004 and has steadily expanded its revenue share lead since. In the fourth quarter, EMC led the market with 22% revenue share.

In 2004 and the fourth quarter, EMC also widened its worldwide revenue share lead in external RAID storage and networked storage, which includes Fibre Channel SANs, iSCSI SANs and network-attached storage (NAS). In 2004, EMC led in external RAID storage revenue for the eighth consecutive year with 22.8% revenue share and was again number one in networked storage with 28.8% share. During the fourth quarter, EMC extended its lead in external RAID to 23.6% revenue share and it grew revenues faster than the next three closest vendors.

In the fourth quarter EMC led networked storage with 29% revenue share, outpacing the next two closest vendors.

EMC`s continued focus in North America, Europe and Asia enterprise markets, coupled with increased investments in the small to medium enterprise segments and emerging markets, led to share gains across the world last year. According to IDC, EMC was number one in external RAID disk storage systems revenue in the US in 2004 with 30.8% revenue share. In Western Europe, EMC took over the number one position in external RAID disk storage systems revenue from Hewlett-Packard last year, leading with 21.8% revenue share. In Asia Pacific, EMC recorded the highest 2004 revenue growth rates for external RAID among the five largest suppliers.

[a] IDC "Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, March 2005"; EMC share includes factory revenue from "EMC" branded storage systems only and excludes sales of re-branded EMC systems sold by EMC partners including Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, Samsung and Langchao Electronic Information Industry Corp, Ltd.

All comparisons included in this release are year over year unless noted.