Tag: storage

IDC notes strong storage growth

Posted on May 17, 2013 by - News

seagate-hddIDC’s worldwide storage tracker has noted that the personal and entry level storage market has shot up 73.4 percent year on year – reaching 20.2 million units shipped in Q1 2013, with shipment value growing 54.1 percent at $1.8 billion.

In the first quarter, there was both strong shipment and revenue growth. The market has finally recovered from the floods in Thailand several years ago which led to a worldwide shortage in hard disks. Thanks to cheaper average selling prices, better products and more user awareness about the need for storage and back up, the market is picking up nicely.

Personal storage makes up 99.1 percent of shipped PELS units and 89.8 percent of values for the quarter. Dual bay product shipments were up 43.6 percent year on year, but single bay devices are overwhelmingly still the most popular choice at 96.8 percent of all units shipped. Higher bay devices saw growth at 38.2 percent year on year.

3.5″ devices lost some market share to the 2.5″ form factor, declining 2.6 percentage points for the year. 3.5″ and 2.5″ devices did both see shipments increase, at 56 and 79.7 percent respectively.

Consumers are flocking to higher capacity storage, generally. 2TB devices made up 49.9 percent of the 3.5″ personal storage market, while 1TB devices held 50.6 percent market share for 2.5″ devices. 4TB devices had the most market share in the entry level segment at 28.3 percent of units shipped.

USB is still the dominant interface, with an increase of 76.4 percent units shipped. Ethernet grew 68.8 percent. Thunderbolt grew plenty at 5102.7 percent – but with a tiny base.

 

Demand for SSDs to stay strong

Posted on May 8, 2013 by - News, Opinions, Products

hdd-hugeAlthough the PC market has seen better days, shipments of solid state drives are expected to grow more than 600 percent by 2017, according to the latest figures released by IHS. However, even at this rate, two thirds of PCs shipped in 2017 will still have mechanical hard drives, although many of them will probably be hybrids. 

PC SSD shipments are expected to hit 227 million units in 2017, up from 31 million last year.

Hard drive shipments will drop to 410 million by 2017, down 14 percent from 475 million in 2012. In just five short years SSDs will claim 36 percent of the market, up from just six percent last year. HDDs will account for the remaining 64 percent, but memory makers stand to cash in from them as well, as hybrid drives hit the market in ever increasing numbers.

The driving force behind the SSD boom will be ultrabooks and other ultrathin devices. IHS analyst Fang Zhang believes ultrabooks and ultrathins, combined with touch screens and convertible form factors, will become very compelling machines, designed to lure consumers away from smartphones and tablets.

Of course, none of this is possible without more consumer interest. Although enthusiasts have been buying SSDs for years, the standard PC box buyer doesn’t care too much about the latest storage technology, which is still too pricey for mainstream adoption. Ultrabooks are slowly changing the public perception of SSDs are geeky devices for gamers and enthusiasts. Consumers are slowly starting to appreciate the added agility and responsiveness of SSD-based systems, and prices are tumbling as well.

On Tuesday Seagate announced its first series of SSD products designed to cover all market segments. The news was closely followed by an announcement from Western Digital and SadDisk, who will collaborate on new hybrid drives. Traditional HDD churners simply have to transition to SSDs and hybrid drives, it is just a matter of time.

“SSDs have dropped in price this year. The industry would probably put this down to supply and demand – but if I’m honest I think it’s all down to competition. Big players are moving in and really taking this industry to the next level – this week WD and Seagate separately announced their SSD push – and it wouldn’t surprise me if these larger players triggered a price war to push smaller players out of the market,” a reseller told us. “In terms of getting consumers more involved isn’t it just a case of making them a more prominent feature of gadgets and cost points? The average consumer just cares about what they can get and for how much.”

More marketing cash from the likes of Seagate and Western Digital will help, but so will tablets and smartphones. Consumer are already enjoying the perks of speedy solid state storage on their iPads and Androids, which means they are far more likely to go for an SSD based PC next time they upgrade. It is basically a case of not downgrading from a horse to a donkey, as Balkanese old wise men would say.

Iron Mountain makes the UK superbrands list

Posted on March 1, 2013 by - News

ironmountainCAInformation management company Iron Mountain has found itself in the 2013 Business Superbrands qualifiers, finding itself among household names such as Samsung, Intel and Apple.

Although it is not in the top 20 – dominated by the heaviest hitters – the company has posted a proud release to let the world know of its increasing brand presence, specifically in the European mid market.

Iron Mountain has been following a strategy that targets European mid market companies. Its campaigns, the company said, have centred on showing off its brand appeal to smaller companies, using a combination of PR, web marketing, direct mail and event channels to raise awareness.

The company said that it works with 150,000 organisations across the world as well as finding itself in the majority of FTSE top 100 businesses for storing and managing critical information. In a statement, the company said despite this reputation, it was “largely unknown in Europe”.

Since 2011, the company has been involved in brand research in the UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Hungary.

The long list of the so-called superbrands is available in PDF format here.

Top ten business superbrands, from top to bottom, were Apple, BA, Google, Visa, Virgin Atlantic, IBM, SHell, Microsoft, London Stock Exchange Group, and Mastercard.

Superbrands claims that its league tables are based on the “opinions of marketing experts, business professionals and thousands of British consumers”.

Three tech companies were in the top ten of the consumer index. Apple was in second place, Microsoft in third, and Google at six. We are not clear about the exact metrics used, but Stephen Cheliotis from the council said they’re judged on “quality, reliability and distinction”.

Businesses not clear on cloud responsibilities

Posted on February 28, 2013 by - News

cloud 2Uninformed or ignorant businesses believe that once data is stored on the cloud, companies lose their responsibility for it – although EU law says they are culpable.

Confusion over the cloud is not exactly surprising: currently laws differ depending on where in the world your servers are based and where your company is based. A report from Iron Mountain said this shows, with over three quarters of survey respondents claiming their service provider would likely get more flack than their own firm. But when it comes to storing sensitive data, it is probably worth doing your homework.

Although the evidence points in the other direction, the majority of respondents said their approach was “responsible” and said that they do take due dilligence when picking cloud suppliers. A fifth want cloud only storage for all their data.

Respondents were in the UK, Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Hungary. Cloud is unsurprisingly a popular option. Iron Mountain urged all companies to understand the specific ins and outs of where their data is stored, whether it could be moved, and who has access to it. They should also consider the core IT infrastructure that is being used and if the providers have a rigorous vetting process in place to check for malware. Businesses should think about just how much data they plan to store, should make back ups, and are warned to seek out multiple providers in a tiered approach, using the cloud, tape, and disk storage.

Warehouse space hits record low

Posted on February 25, 2013 by - News

forkliftRetail is hurting and the slowdown now appears to be trickling down to warehouse outfits, who are slowly running out of space. 

According to a report from Jones Lang LaSalle, the amount of warehouse space available in the UK is at its lowest level since records began. Some regions are already experiencing shortages of immediately available space.

Tim Johnson of Jones Lang LaSalle told Logistics Manager that the amount of immediately available new floor space is at its lowest level since his outfit started keeping records and it currently sits at just 8 million sq ft UK-wide.

“This is 71 per cent below its pre-recession peak of nearly 29 million sq ft in March 2008 – this definitely affected take up levels last year,” he said.

The vacancy rate in December 2012 stood at about 10 percent across the UK. Overall take-up in 2012 was lower than in 2011 due to a lower level of overall economic activity. Worse, occupier demand slowed down in 2012, but even so the amount of available space kept declining. Construction of new facilities slowed down after the 2008 meltdown and it is currently at the lowest level since 2005.

Jon Sleeman, director EMEA Logistics & Industrial Research at Jones Lang LaSalle, pointed out that the availability of good quality space is now becoming a real issue and some clients are being forced to consider alternatives, such as build to suit developments. On a positive note, he argued that some developers with infrastructure and planning in place stand to benefit from the downturn.

Dell: we’re serious about enterprise

Posted on January 31, 2013 by - News

haas330Dell CEO Michael Dell, so the rumours go, notoriously hates his company being referred to as a box-shifter.

While speculation about him personally taking the company off the market to exert more control increases, European bigwigs here at Dell’s Technology Camp, Amsterdam, took to the stage promising a packed room of analysts and reporters that Dell is on an aggressive push into enterprise, but that it is very much established there already.

Dell believes it will find opportunity in a world plagued with recession, and heavy hitters such as Marius Haas, president for Dell Enterprise Solutions, are fighting the company’s corner.

Opening the presentation was Aongus Hegarty, president, Dell EMEA. He insisted that Dell’s position is as an established software company, and that its many recent acquisitions – recently herded into one umbrella group as Dell Software, are paying off. Recurring themes from all the speakers were the company’s broad intellectual property and a vast stockpile of patents, swelling with each acquisition.

Crucially, Aongus pointed out that Dell is unique to the competition. Showing a slide that presented the company in a very favourable light within the enterprise, his statement was backed up by HP veteran Marius Haas. Haas said that over the last 10 or so years, people have been mostly thinking about performance and value – but the trend has shifted onto how also to provide operational efficiency across the board.

Haas pointed out that systems can be expensive to maintain, and flagged the Itanium as an example. Although these systems can provide some operational efficiencies, costs are there because they don’t provide the full package, according to Haas. Even with cheaper Chinese vendors (naming no names), though capital costs may be at bargain prices, operational costs can be higher because there are other factors to think in – and they still must be maintained. This is where Dell differs, he said.

Scalability is another key point. Being able to deliver services from the SMBs to enterprise level means more opportunity and flexibility. Haas mentioned an initiative by the British government to store all data from every study in a digital format: this leads on to conversations from high computational requirements through to what is possible with tape storage, or the cheapest options to protect and keep that data.

Although there has been a slow down in business spending, Dell fully expects the second half of this year to pick up. We will have to wait and see. What is clear, is that Dell is serious about further entrenching its brand as an enterprise company and its execs were quite convincing. Can a further shift away from shaky consumer territory be on the cards?