iSCSI Ramping, Says IDC

The latest disk storage systems report from IDC shows significant ramp-up in iSCSI sales (see IDC: Storage Spending Up). Between the last quarter of 2004 and the first quarter of 2005, worldwide iSCSI disk-system revenues rose 22 percent, from $41.3 million to $50.5 million, the firm says.

As the market is only just forming, it's too soon to make solid forecasts, says IDC analyst Natalya Yezhkova. "The market is growing, certainly, but it rose last year from a very small base," she notes. In 2003, IDC recorded just $18 million in worldwide sales of iSCSI disk systems. For all of 2004, the firm's figure was $113 million.

Though iSCSI remains about 2 percent of the overall networked disk storage systems market of about $2.3 billion, this year's first quarter has outstripped iSCSI sales at the comparable point last year.

It's too early to call winners and losers, but for this year's first quarter, Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP) showed 43.3 percent share of the market, with EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) holding 28.6 percent.

From IDC's perspective, the rest of the iSCSI market is a motley crew of public and private companies, many of which are just starting to ship products, including Dell Inc. (Nasdaq: DELL), EqualLogic Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), to name a few.Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch