Re: Meh - its based on revenue
Mr. Nobody. I totally agree and the challenge with this article is that El Reg only tells half of the story. This has been a complaint of mine for a while. The IDC report referenced actually publishes both shipped revenue and shipped capacity. For some reason El Reg only comments on the revenue which can be misleading. As you said a vendor that is more expensive per TB may have actually shipped less capacity, but made more revenue making the analysis skewed. Being dramatic, think of it this way. Say vendor “A” ships 1PB of SAN for $1M and vendor “B” ships 2PB of SAN for $500K. Which one sold more? I would argue that the vendor “B” that shipped 2PB sold more storage than vendor “A” who only shipped 1PB but made more money.
This article states “IDC's quarterly storage tracker* has revealed that IBM and NetApp have lost the most ground, and HP and ODMs have gained most.”, but that is on a revenue basis. While the statement is still true on capacity, the numbers aren’t as dramatic. IBM’s revenues were down 9.6%, but their capacity shipped was only down 0.4%, less than one percent, meaning that basically they lowered their prices, but didn’t lose as much share as the 9.6%% would indicate. Same on NetApp, while NetApp’s revenue was down 12.8% on revenue, capacity shipped was only down 0.8%, again less than one percent. Also on the capacity shipped chart NetApp is #2 in capacity shipped behind EMC, but on the revenue chart is #4. Maybe this means that NetApp is simply lowered prices vs. lost 12.8% share. HP, the one who grew 5.3% revenue in this report only grew 0.6% in capacity shipped which puts them at a further distance than the “within a whisker” of NetApp as the article’s revenue only analysis indicates. So HP grew revenue 5.3%, but only grew capacity shipped 0.6%, which is more important, depends who you ask. HP may have just raised their prices or is selling more expensive product (Flash) than in the past. Either way, how much capacity they are shipping hasn’t increased at the rate of their gain in revenue.
Net is the revenue side of these charts is only half the story and I wish El Reg would report on both because at the end of the day, it is up to the reader to decide which metric, capacity shipped or revenue shipped is more important to them. Ideally, the revenue per TB shipped would be the best indicator for a reader who is analyzing storage because it would actually tell them who is expensive and who is not.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
