It
gives me great pleasure to introduce the 5th annual edition of
STORAGEsearch.com's list of the Fastest Growing Storage Companies. 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. 24% 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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| Storage Software |
Gartner predicted the
storage management software market would grow 12% in 2005.
According to
IDC, the storage software
market grew 10.0% year over year to $2.1 billion in the third quarter of
2005. |
| Optical Storage Media |
| According
to a report by BCC
(RGB-317 Data Storage Media: Materials, Technologies, and Markets) The optical
storage media market in 2005 was worth $12.4 billion and is expected
to grow at an AAGR of 19.8% to reach $30.6 billion by 2010. |
| Fibre-channel adapters & switches |
This market
declined in 2004. But the anticipated threat from lower cost hotly hyped
iSCSI turned out
to be a damp squib in 2005. Although growing fast, the iSCSI market was only a
tiny fraction of the network storage market. The
SAN industry started to
switch over to 4Gps in the second half of 2005, and in 2006 this will create a
new wave of infrastructure investment by users seeking higher performance.
In
May 2005 Dell'Oro Group
said this market had grown 10% in the first quarter. | |
| RAM |
Semico Research predicted
that the RAM market would decline by 3% in 2005. The RAM market has
always fluctuated wildly from boom to bust. 2004 was a boom year. The RAM
market is expected to grow again during 2006-2008.
According to
Gartner Dataquest the
DRAM market could be worth $26.4 billion in 2006. |
| Storage Services |
| IDC estimated that the storage
services market in 2005 would be worth $28 billion and growing at
about 5% / year. That's a much smaller figure than the earlier hyped projection
of around $45 billion (2005) for this segment which was predicted by
Gartner in 2002.
Reasons for the smaller than expected market may be:- cost reductions due to
increased standardization, competitive pressures from offshore and efficiencies
due to delivering some services through the web and software technology.
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| Tape backup |
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The tape
market, worth about $3 billion in 2005 - has been declining
for years as it has been overtaken in terms of cost, ease of use and speed of
backup by
Disk to disk backup.
The tape market supplied 3 of the top 10 fastest growing storage
companies in our
2001
list, but STORAGEsearch doubts if the tape backup market will ever again
experience revenue growth.
According to the current market forecasts
published by
Freeman Reports, tape
drive unit shipments will grow at a 2% CAGR through 2010. A growth rate of 7% is
projected for tape automation systems. The number of tape drive suppliers has
shrunk from 74 in 1990 to 20 in 2000 and to 10 in 2005. but strong demand for
tape will continue for years. ...read the tape
market article (pdf) | | | |
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Looking at
Some Growing and Declining Storage Segments in 2005
2005
was another year of strong double digit revenue growth for many segments in the
storage market. STORAGEsearch.com
estimates that the storage market worldwide exceeded $150 billion in revenue in
2005. The table below, gives a summary of growth in key storage segments | |
| Solid State Disks |
SSD
manufacturers were strongly represented in the
fastest growing storage
companies in 2004.. Most SSD oems aren't public companies and don't publish
their revenue results. Having taken the soundings of leading SSD vendors in
Q305 - I expect the SSD industry revenue growth in 2005 was in the region of
45%.
Looking ahead - as
new disruptive
markets for SSDs will open up in 2006 (which we'll write more about later)
I expect the SSD market growth rate to accelerate sharply in 2006. |
| Flash Memory |
| In November
2005 - Web-Feet
Research said it expected flash revenue in 2005 to reach nearly $20
billion, 13% higher than 2004. |
| Hard disk drives |
2005 was a
turnaround year for the HDD market. New markets in comsumer products have
helped to balance out the historic tendency of the hard disk drive market to
supply the increased capacity demands of the IT market at an ever decreasing
overall price.
According to a
report by
Gartner - HDD market
revenue in 2005 will be $27.2 billion (up 19.2% compared to 2004.
277
million hard disks were estimated to be shipped in 2005.
HDD revenue
will rise by a further 9.2% in 2006 to reach $29.8 billion. Much of the
growth in demand is coming from emerging consumer markets. Consumer demand for
storing digital music, movies and photographs seems almost insatiable.
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| RAID systems |
Market research on both
sides of the Atlantic indicates that nearly 80% of user organizations plan to
adopt disk to disk backup. When that factor is added to high growth rates in
capacity demand, 2005 should be another double digit revenue growth year for the
RAID market.
In December 2005
IDC said the external disk
storage systems market had grown 12.5% in the 3rd quarter of 2005 - reaching
$3.9 billion in the quarter. The emerging
iSCSI market doubled
again with 105% revenue growth year over year. | |
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