EMC, Veritas lead in worldwide PBBA revenues

Unlike overall disk storage, purpose-built backup appliances’ total worldwide factory revenue increased in the first quarter of 2016, according to International data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly tracker.

IDC shows the backup appliance marketing growing 6.2 percent year-over-year to $762.2 million in the first quarter. That’s in contrast to overall disk storage,  which declined seven percent to $8.2 billion in the quarter according to IDC. External storage, which includes SAN and NAS, declined 3.7 percent to $5.4 billion for the quarter.

EMC led the pack in overall growth for backup appliances.  Total worldwide PBBA capacity shipped during this period was 886 PB, an increase of 40% compared to last year.

EMC generated $427 million in revenue and held 56% of the market share for PBBAs, compared to $377 million in revenue and 52.5% market share in the first quarter of 2015. That was a 13.2 percent growth rate.

No. 2 Veritas generated $139 million in revenue and held 18.2% market share in the first quarter of this year, compared to $133 million in revenue and 18.5% market share in the first quarter or 2015 when it was part of Symantec. The company gained 4.4 percent growth this year in the PBBA market.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise came in third with $35 million in revenue or 4.5 percent market share, compared to $32.5 million in revenue and 4.5 percent market share in the first quarter of 2015. HPE experienced 6.3 percent growth between the first quarter this year and the first quarter in 2015.

IBM backup appliance revenue fell 26% to $30 million, or  3.9 percent market share, compare to $41 million last year. Dell generated $25 million or 3.2 percent market share compared to $18.3 million in revenue the same period last year.

Dell is in completing a $67 billion acquisition of EMC. The combined companies had 59.2% of the backup appliance market.

Total PBBA open systems factory revenue increased 8.3 percent year-over-year in the first quarter with revenues of $703.2 million. Mainframe revenues declined 14%. Last year, the PBBA market experienced a downturn in early 2015 before sales picked up later in the year. 

IDC defines a PBBA as a standalone disk-based solution that utilizes software, disk arrays, server engines or nodes used for a target for backup data and specifically data coming from a backup application or can be tightly integrated with the backup software to catalog, index, schedule, and perform data movement.