External Data Storage Savings - NetApp Integration Market Share

Reliable external data storage is one of the must haves for businesses globally. NetApp external data storage appeals to small, medium and large businesses and has rapidly gained market share this past year. Market researcher IDC reported NetApp sales topped $5 billion in the first quarter of 2010. This was an increase of seventeen percent. Impressive sales result in the midst of the global financial crisis and European Contagion uncertainty. NetApp Inc came in third EMC Corp and IBM in sales for the external data storage equipment market. NetApp leaped ahead of Hewlett Packard. Dell and Hitachi Limited in Sales.

Business and personal computer users should have a comprehensive data protection strategy with data backup, disaster recovery, system restore with archive and compliance. NetApp has proven popular because it integrates data protection when you are storing data. Thus you can address your costly issues whilst you target the more aggressive recovery points and recovery times. This integration of NetApp external data storage appeals to small, medium and large businesses and has rapidly gained market share this past year.

Users have to determine between the solutions increased cost and complexity. They then have to determine if their data is adequately protected and stored. There are a couple of different approaches, with different pros and cons. These benefits become extremely important in shared infrastructures such as virtualization and cloud.  Cost and time management goals call for the consolidation and minimization of the number of unique components.  Of course this is only y one piece of the IT server, network, and storage puzzle.  

The following market share and revenues were reported by IDC.

1. EMC's revenue climbed 38 percent from a year earlier to $1.2 billion. EMC’s market share rose from 21 percent to 24.6 percent. EMC’s sales were boosted by the acquisition of Data Domain in July 2009.
2. IBM sales were $579 million with an 11.7 percent of the market for the first quarter. This was an increase from 11.2 percent a year earlier.
3. NetApp's sales rose 47 percent to $550 million from the previous year. NetApp's market share climbed to 11.1 percent from 8.8 percent a year earlier.

IDC analyst Steve Scully said NetApp's rapid market share growth growing is due to its broad appeal. It’s product range appeals to small, medium and large businesses. This is because all the products run on the same operating system. Scully noted this makes it easy to upgrade as a company grows. Scully added on NetApp external data storage,  “That's a very big increase in market share.”  

The integrated system of NetApp aims to reduce costs and time wastage. It does this by decreasing the hardware devices deployed and the amount of storage capacity required.

NetApp Integrated data protection has a number of embedded services in its integrated data protection Data ONTAP operating system.

• MetroCluster, which allows for the high availability of your data
• SnapMirror that allows for secure and timely disaster recovery
• SnapLock fulfills your compliance needs
• SnapVault and Snapshot copies for data backup

This integrated system decreases the number of backup servers you require. Which is a very significant cost saving. All NetApp FAS systems use the Data ONTAP operating system.

NetApp external data storage appeals to small, medium and large businesses. The one platform to use through integration facilitates training and service. You only need to train on and service one platform. Very simply you need to an additional FAS system to serve as a backup target, a Data recovery target, a high availability target, archive target and compliance target.

NetApp’s storage efficiency technologies like deduplication from primary to secondary storage optimize your storage also. The savings can to other areas of your budget or enable greater data recovery and data disaster management. Your training and maintenance costs are decreased. Further more your energy efficiency improves with less power and space consumption.

NetApp stock price has doubled

The stockmarket seems to have agreed on NetApp’s appeal.  NetApp Inc’s shares have doubled in price over the past twelve months. The data storage market has been successful for investors on the past year. Shares in NetApp’s competitors have all reason, from 10 percent to 45 percent.

While the NetApp external data storage may appear to be the best solution for you make sure you get an independent assessment of the alternatives available. Also understand that even with reliable storage systems circumstances can conspire 9the black swan theory) to result in totally unexplainable downtime or data loss. This is why many double up on data storage solutions. 

Unexplainable include users accidentally deleting files and random hardware failures. Others are natural disasters such as earthquakes, storms or extreme heat or cold shifts. Human-caused disasters such as spills or breakages may also occur. What is known as if you have data to protect or store you need a data recovery and storage plan.