Disk Storage Shipments Grow

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- Every few years, overall demand for storage systems is boosted by a major industry shift. Through 2012, the new accelerator will be the emergence of more content-centric businesses, according to IDC. Worldwide disk storage systems capacity shipments will continue to more than double every two years, growing at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 53% from 2007 to 2012, while spending will pass the $34 billion mark in 2012.

From spending and terabyte shipment perspectives, capacity-optimized storage will conquer more than half of the market in 2012. While past drivers, such as the digitalization of content, disk-based data protection, and long-term data retention, continue to be important to storage capacity growth, the focus for organizations will increasingly be on boosting storage utilization levels through new technologies such as thin provisioning and data deduplication.

"Multiple business trends and new technologies will force a restructuring of storage systems and the storage industry over the next five years. New enterprise datacenter designs based on the principles of massive consolidation, extensive virtualization, and unified connectivity will drive new storage systems designs, including greater use of tier-zero storage leveraging solid state drives. The most important new force is the emergence of content-rich business applications in areas such as telecommunications, media/entertainment, and Web 2.0," said Natalya Yezhkova, research manager for Storage Systems at IDC.

IDC