Industry statistics show an increasing hunger for storage gear, thanks to factors including government regulations for retaining data and the growing digitalisation of content such as music. The amount of disk storage system capacity shipped worldwide in the first quarter of this year hit 247 petabytes, up 39.4 percent from the first quarter of 2003, according to researcher IDC. A petabyte is a million gigabytes.
Revenue for disk storage systems is growing much less quickly, as prices fall. According to IDC, total disk storage system revenue grew 3.5 percent in the first quarter, to $5.1bn.
Storage for the have-nots
Data storage equipment can reside within server and PC computers as well as in separate boxes full of disk drives, known as disk arrays.
Both internal and external storage systems frequently are set up using redundant array of independent disk, or RAID, technology, which allows data to be preserved even if a drive fails. Historically, storage heavyweights EMC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Hitachi have focused much of their attention on making high-end external arrays. These products, such as EMC's Symmetrix, connect to multiple servers for more efficient use of storage resources and improved management. But the machines, which can hold scores of terabytes and include sophisticated data-copying features, can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Storage manufacturers have been paying more attention to the lower end of the market lately. Dell, which has a partnership with EMC to make and sell arrays, recently introduced a networked storage system that can hold up to 3 terabytes and has a starting price of about $5,000 (£2723). Samsung, which also has a partnership with EMC, is aiming to sell storage equipment to small and mid-sized businesses in Korea.
John McArthur, analyst at IDC, thinks there is a considerable market for white box makers focused on bare-bones storage arrays, especially outside the United States, in places like China. "There's a lot of units in that low-end storage space," he said. "It is not unreasonable to expect Intel to try to increase their presence in the white box market."
Talkback
Yes - storage commodotisation is on the way