Brad Nisbet Storage Quotations

The external disk storage systems market growth continued to accelerate through the year. Data growth was one driver, but the availability of affordable systems that support multiple tiers of storage to address data protection, business continuity requirements, and online, active archives also contributed.

The overriding upside to the acquisition for Sun is that they now have additional 'feet on the street' who are extremely well-equipped to sell enterprise storage solutions. Yes, they have focused on tape in the enterprise, but we have no reason to expect that these additional salespeople cannot leverage their expertise on the disk systems side, taking advantage of Sun's broad disk storage systems portfolio.

The sweet spot continues to be midrange products. A lot of the features and functionality once only in the high end has migrated its way down to lower segments of market. That combined with the fact that many midrange products offer multiple tiers of storage is driving the growth.

Storage spending is clearly trending upward as organizations strive to stay ahead of their information storage demands. After nearly two years of positive momentum, spending on storage systems, particularly those priced less than $300,000, continues to be a top priority in the ongoing efforts to expand and rebuild IT infrastructure.

This is the third consecutive quarter that disk storage systems revenue growth has outpaced that of the server market. However, internal storage growth has exceeded external growth in three of the last four quarters as organizations explore new technologies that increase the flexibility of storage configurations.

Data growth was one driver, but the availability of affordable systems that support multiple tiers of storage to address data protection, business continuity requirements, and online, active archives also contributed.