COVID-19 Impact on external storage spending is evident with 20.6% YoY drop in 1Q20

As per IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker 1Q20 release, India’s external storage market witnessed a decline of 20.6% Year-over-Year (YoY) by vendor revenue and stood at USD 87.8 million in 1Q20 (Jan-Mar). The majority of the YoY decline in storage spending was seen in Professional Services, Manufacturing, and Telecommunications organizations in 1Q20.

“Due to COVID-19, most of the organizations have reduced their IT spending for this FY2020. Businesses are revisiting their CAPEX spending and would invest only if there is a pressing need, else would opt for OPEX models. Organizations are moving to Public Cloud (Backup and DRaaS) so that they can avoid capital spending in these hard financial times,” says Dileep Nadimpalli, Research Manager, Enterprise Infrastructure, IDC India.

All-Flash Arrays (AFA) contributed 37.6% to the overall external storage systems market in 1Q20. With the advent of NVMe, more organizations are expected to adopt new-age flash technologies to address the growing demand for high-density applications such as artificial intelligence, machine learning/ deep learning, real-time analytics, etc.

High-end storage systems grew by 3.7% YoY due to increased investments from Banking and Government organizations in 1Q20. The Entry and Midrange storage segments witnessed a steep double-digit YoY decline in 1Q20.

Organizations are expected to delay their IT spending on technology refresh but would spend on new projects which would drive automation, increase performance, and optimize costs due to cash flow issues. Businesses would prioritize projects such as digital transformation, IoT, artificial intelligence, etc. in the near future.

Major Vendors Analysis

Dell Technologies continued to be the market leader with a 31.4% market share by vendor revenue, followed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) with a 15.9% market share in 1Q20. Hitachi and IBM witnessed strong YoY growth in 1Q20 due to key wins from government and banking organizations respectively in 1Q20.

IDC India Forecast

The external enterprise storage systems market is expected to grow at a single-digit compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) for the 2019 – 2024 time period. We expect storage spending in CY 2020 to decline after a couple of strong YoY growth in the past consecutive years majorly due to COVID-19 impact.

-IDC