According to a new report by market research firm IDC, Network Attached Storage (NAS) for the first time has topped Direct Attached Storage (DAS) in sales. In first quarter 2003, NAS revenue was higher than that of DAS, which saw sales drop 1 percent from the previous quarter. Overall storage capacity sales have increased, growing 49 percent from last year. The storage industry shipped 175.6PB of storage capacity in first quarter 2003.
"Network storage for the first time represents more than half (53 percent revenue share) of the total external disk storage systems market, up 5 points from a year ago. The traditional direct-attached storage system represents 42 percent of total external disk storage revenue in the first quarter, down from 46 percent a year ago," said Charlotte Rancourt, research director of IDC's Disk Storage Systems program. EMC leads network storage market sales with 26.3 percent revenue share. In overall disk storage sales, Hewlett-Packard (HP) led the market with 26.3 percent revenue share. In second place was IBM with 19.1 percent, followed by EMC with 11.7 percent.
