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It
gives me great pleasure to introduce the 4th annual edition of the top 10
fastest growing storage companies list. The recovery in the storage market means
that many companies are now reporting revenue growth rates of 10%, or 20%. But
that wasn't enough to get you into the top 10 list for this year. 31%
revenue growth was the minimum entry requirement.
If you're looking
for successful companies to buy from, or successful companies to partner with
these are the companies you cannot ignore. | |
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Chewing over 2004 - the Rising Stars of Storage and the
Dogs which Failed to Bark
In 2004 -
STORAGEsearch estimates worldwide
storage market revenue exceeded
$70 billion.
That's bigger than the worldwide server market - which was about
$45
billion but smaller than the PC market which was
$250 billion.
If
anyone was skeptical about the recovery in the IT market which started in the
3rd quarter of 2003 - the results were clear for everyone to see by the
phenomenal growth in the storage market in 2004.
18 of the world's top
1,000 storage companies achieved annual revenue growth rates above 30%. While 3
exceeded 100%.
The fastest growing major segments within the storage
market were:-
The Storage Dogs Which Didn't Bark
Some
new storage interconnect technologies like
iSCSI and
Infiniband failed
to achieve the market traction which had been optimistically predicted by the
venture capitalists
which funded their original development. Although growth rates for both these
markets were in double digits - the number of user sites remained
disappointingly small. Technical compatibility problems were
cited as the cause for
low iSCSI take up, and STORAGEsearch will be returning to this issue with a
market survey in Q1
2005.
The InfiniBand market suffered user neglect for two main
reasons. The biggest server companies were hanging on as long as possible to
their more profitable proprietary interconnects, and the recession had stymied
the threat from potential startup server makers. Another reason was that
conventional technologies such as
Ethernet and
Fibre-channel were getting faster - and in the minds of many users - might make
the need for InfiniBand irrelevant.
Compared to the double digit growth
in the star segments above, markets which merely achieved single digit revenue
growth such as hard disk
drives, fibre-channel
HBAs and switches
and tape backup systems
looked like they were flatlining.
In 2004 there was a 75% reduction
in the rate of storage companies being
acquired, merged or going
bust. Only 21 of the top 1,000 storage companies met this fate compared to
an average annual 86 companies in the period 2000 to 2003.
Looking
ahead to 2005 STORAGEsearch predicts that the solid state disk market will
maintain its momentum and grow past $2 billion annual market revenue.
Serial Attached SCSI
will become the hottest DAS connection technology and will quickly replace
parallel SCSI in new high
performance systems by the 2nd half of the year. In the storage networking
market - 4Gbps Fibre-channel will become the new standard at the high end,
while the debate in the Ethernet attached NAS market over the merits of TCP/IP
hardware accelerators will be ended by the market accepting that it's a must-have
and not just a nice-to-have option.
Stay tuned to our
news page to see how this
continuing saga unfolds. Or take a look at our
storage history
pages and the article Chewing
over 2003 to see how 2004 compares to the past.
See also:-
Silver
Blaze - the online short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle whose Sherlock
Holmes first uttered the memorable phrase about "the curious incident of
the dog in the night-time." | | |
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For an
experienced player like
Megabyte picking winners was
just a question
of pulling the right handles. | |
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| Squeak!
- Why are Most Analysts Wrong About Solid State Disks? |
Most
analysts and editors of other computer publications don't really understand the
solid state disk market. They show their ignorance and naivete by prefacing
every discussion of SSDs with a superficial analysis which compares the cost per
byte of storage between flash and hard disk drives. That's the wrong answer to
the wrong question. And it's far removed from why the SSD market is racing to
become a multi billion dollar market seemingly in blithe ignorance of the cost
per byte proposition.
This article tells you what's important to
users and the main applications in which SSDs are already being used and new
applications where they will be used in the next 3 years. ...read the
article, Solid State Disks |
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STORAGEsearch.com
Product Category of the Year 2004
Editor:- December 20, 2004 - It
was revealed today that Solid State Disks are the Product Category
of the Year 2004 on STORAGEsearch.com based on reader pageviews.
The Solid State Disk page was the #1 category (out of more than 70 vertical
storage subjects) viewed by readers for 44 of the first 50 weeks in 2004. In
previous years - the product category of the year in 2002 and 2003 (2 years
running) was
SATA.
SSDs
which have been around for over 20 years - have the potential to become a
disruptive technology in the server market as they can replace faster processors
and even whole servers by providing application speedups of x2 to x3 for many
common business and scientific applications. The high entry level price of SSDs
means that this has mainly been happening at the enterprise server level - but
as the technology becomes more familiar outsideof its government market roots
this will turn into a $10
Billion Market by 2007.
SSDs are a fast growing market segment. In
fact 3 of the world's fastest
growing storage companies in 2004:- (M-Systems,
SimpleTech and
Texas Memory Systems)
make solid state disks.
STORAGEsearch has been analysing the factors
which will help to disinhibit growth in the SSD market by surveying SSD users
during the 4th quarter of 2004 and we'll be revealing important primary data
about buyer needs and experiences in a new article in January. One preview from
our survey results? Users like the technology. When asked the question:- "If
you already use SSDs - how do you rate your experience of the benefits delivered
compared to expectations?" - 65% said it greatly exceeded expectations
(and they would advocate others to try). Solid State Disks | |
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