Flash Arrays Account for Over 50% of External Storage in EMEA- IDC

The  value of the total EMEA external storage systems market fell 9.8% year over year to $1.57 billion in the third quarter of 2015 (3Q15), according to International Data Corporation's EMEA Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker, 3Q15.

The traditional hard disk array (HDD) segment in EMEA declined for yet another quarter, falling 27% in user value.

The flash market, however, recorded huge growth, with all-flash system growing 75.4% annually and hybrid flash arrays growing 7% YoY.

"The downward trend was consistent across subregions in a quarter characterized by the lack of big deals, an exacerbating price war, and particularly unfavorable exchange rates," said Silvia Cosso, senior analyst, European Storage Research, IDC. "On the other hand, a look at the trend in euros gives a completely different picture of the market, with five quarters of uninterrupted growth and a 7.6% increase year over year. The transition toward the 3rd Platform is also influencing purchase decisions, with users shying away from high-end systems, which declined for the 10th quarter in a row, to fully embrace new solutions such as flash systems, which passed the 50% threshold of total external storage value."

Regional Highlights
Western Europe: The Western European external storage market fell 9.7% YoY in value to $1.13 billion in 3Q15, but grew 7.7% in euros.

"The Western European external storage market continued its downward trend in the third quarter of 2015 as spending on traditional HDDs declined sharply," said Archana Venkatraman, senior analyst, European Storage Research, IDC. "The high growth in flash storage coupled with strong ODM vendor revenue growth shows that Western European enterprises are heavily investing in disruptive storage technologies such as flash, software-defined storage, cloud-based storage, and hyperconverged systems when they refresh their infrastructures."

Country-wise, the decline in the U.K. storage market continues, with some traditionally strong segments such as financial services slowing down investments.

The U.K. is also the main hub for storage startups in Europe and therefore faces greater competition in price. A positive picture is emerging for France, however, with the country returning to growth after a long run of negative quarters.