Dell Dominates Worldwide Storage Market In Q1 2018 As HPE Share Drops

Dell has increased its market share lead over Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the worldwide storage system arena, capturing nearly 22 percent of the market in the first quarter 2018, according to new data from research firm IDC.

Dell EMC generated $2.8 billion in storage revenue, representing a year over year sales growth of 43 percent. Dell's global market share now stands at 21.6 percent, up from 20.3 percent share in first quarter 2017.

Dell also increased its lead in the worldwide external enterprise storage systems market to 32.9 percent in the first quarter from 27.2 percent one year ago, putting it far ahead of NetApp's 14.2 percent market share.

[Related: Dell Counters HPE: Storage Products Will Be 'Supported Throughout Their Lifetime Period']

Dell's storage business "gained more than 5.8 percentage points of share year-over-year in the first calendar quarter of 2018. That's a really big deal," said Jeff Clarke, vice chairman, product and operations at Dell, in a blog post on Wednesday regarding IDC's first-quarter storage figures. Clarke, a 31-year Dell veteran, took control of the company's Infrastructure Solutions Group earlier this year and is leading a simplified storage product roadmap initiative at Dell EMC.

Scott Winslow, president of Winslow Technology Group, a Waltham, Mass. based Dell partner, said his company's Dell storage business in the first quarter was up more than 30 percent quarter over quarter.

"They're going after the market very aggressively looking to gain share and their efforts are paying off," said Winslow. "We've seen tremendous gains in Dell storage. The power of Dell and EMC coming together is coming to fruition and I think it's a challenging time to be at HPE."

HPE's market share dropped to 17.7 percent for first quarter 2018, down from 20.1 percent share in the same quarter one year ago. HPE revenue hit $2.3 billion, an increase of 18 percent year over year. For fourth quarter 2017, HPE was the worldwide storage leader with 18.9 percent market share, followed by Dell at 18 percent share, according to IDC.

Dell also dominated the worldwide external enterprise storage market in first quarter 2018, capturing a whopping 32.9 percent share with $2.06 billion in sales. For external storage share, NetApp ranked second with 14.2 share and $890 million, then HPE in third at 10.4 percent share with $652 million in revenues, according to IDC.

Last week, Dell reported a 10 percent year over year increase in storage sales of $4.08 billion for its first fiscal quarter.

The Round Rock, Texas-based infrastructure giant has been mounting an all out storage sales charge investing more than $2 billion, hiring 1,200 new storage sales specialist and initiating for the first time channel storages sales quotas. Dell EMC also created a new Future-Proof Storage Loyalty program that gives customers a three-year, money-back guarantee, hardware investment protection, and a 10 percent allocation and one year of built-in Virtustream Storage Cloud on Unity all-flash products, to name a few.

Winslow touted the customer storage loyalty program as a market differentiator.

"This loyalty program that they put out for customers is resonating," he said. "We expect to see more of these positive storage results from us in quarter two through quarter four [this year]."

Rounding out the first quarter 2018 worldwide storage rankings, NetApp placed third in market share at 6.8 percent with revenue of $890 million, followed by Hitachi at 3.6 percent share and $464 million in sales, then IBM at 3 percent share capturing $387 million in revenue.