IDC projects growth in demand for storage systems

THE Interactive Data Corporation (IDC) believes that the demand for external storage systems will increase in the next five year period, despite the current global economic recession.

IDC added that disk storage systems capacity will grow by 44 percent worldwide in 2009, while overall disk storage capacity worldwide will increase by around 35 percent over the same period.

Says Natalya Yezhkova, Storage Systems Research Manager at IDC: “We expect data generation worldwide will slow only a little over the next five years. However, we do expect a slowdown in the growth of new storage systems capacity shipments. The economic crisis is the most powerful driver for this slowdown in the short-term. Longer-term, a moderate contraction in capacity shipments is expected as technologies that help to increase storage utilization or reduce amounts of data that need to be stored are increasingly adopted.”

IDC said the demand for external disk storage systems over the next five years will remain relatively healthy in support of the vast growth of digital information.

Lindsey Varney, research analyst, IDC Worldwide DiskStorage Systems Tracker. Added, “Looking forward, it is anticipated that the network disk storage system market will continue to grow steadily through 2013, fueled by continuously high growth in the iSCSI SAN market. Additionally, after declining in 2009, the Open SAN market will regain its vigor in 2010 and beyond.”