Information storage leader EMC gained significant market share in 2000, reports IDC

EMC Corporation was number one in the rapidly growing worldwide disk storage systems market in 2000, gaining more market share than any other supplier and extending its lead in several major information storage segments, according to a new report from IDC (International Data Corporation).

In its 2000 Disk Storage Systems Forecast and Analysis, IDC forecasts that EMC captured the top revenue share of the worldwide disk storage systems market, outpacing all other suppliers. The second-, third- and fourth-place suppliers in 1999 all declined or remained flat in total information storage market share during 2000, according to IDC.

Other highlights of the new IDC report indicate a clean sweep by EMC in outgaining all other suppliers in every major information storage hardware segment in 2000:

• In the total external RAID market (storage systems connected to any computer operating system or network), IDC reports that EMC extended its lead with a 26.1% revenue share, more than 10 points ahead of the #2 supplier. According to IDC, the market for external RAID storage systems grew 28% to $21.5 billion in 2000.

• In the red-hot networked information storage category, which represents both SAN (storage area networks) and NAS (network-attached storage) deployments, EMC widened its lead by leaping from 20.3% market share in 1999 to 30.5% in 2000, more than doubling the share of the #2 supplier. IDC estimates the booming networked information storage market grew 136% in total size from $2.8 billion in 1999 to $6.7 billion in 2000. The second-, third- and fourth-place suppliers in 1999 all experienced market share declines in 2000, according to IDC.

• In UNIX external RAID, EMC extended its lead as the #1 supplier, more than doubling the revenue share of its nearest competitor. IDC estimates that EMC captured a 29% share, up nearly three points over 1999 in a market segment that grew nearly 40% overall in 2000.

• In mainframe (S/390) storage, EMC captured 50.3% revenue market share in 2000, extending its lead to more than 30 share points ahead of the #2 supplier.

• In Windows NT external RAID, a segment that grew 74% to $5.9 billion in 2000, EMC increased its share to 22%, gained more share than any other supplier, and improved its position as the #2 supplier.

For a graphical presentation of the latest IDC market share figures, visit www.emc.com/marketshare.

"In a year when storage moved to centre stage as one of the most strategic and fastest-growing IT markets, EMC extended its lead," said John McArthur, Vice President of Storage Research at IDC. "Storage is an important component of business infrastructure, and IDC expects continued strong demand for external storage. Given the importance of storage to core business processing, any slowdown in IT spending will not likely be in the high-end storage segment."

The IDC report - which does not include information storage software and services, two of EMC`s fastest-growing major businesses - concurs with a number of recent studies that have found explosive growth rates in information and an increasingly strategic role for intelligent storage systems, software and services. As previously stated, EMC estimates the market opportunity for information storage will grow to more than $100 billion by 2005.

The University of California, Berkeley, recently reported that the amount of new information being generated is expected to double annually - with more original information created in the next two years (2001-02) than all the information accumulated in the entire history of mankind.

EMC is consistently ranked number one in independent customer satisfaction surveys. In the most recently published independent survey of storage customers, Information Week magazine found that EMC was rated number one in Overall Customer Satisfaction by a wide margin over all other competitors. The Information Week survey of nearly 400 IT decision-makers also rated EMC number one in five other specific categories: Product Reliability, Interoperability Standards, Service-Level Guarantees, Product Innovation, and After-Sale Service.