Back-up market boasts billion-dollar quarter as EMC dominates industry

Worldwide purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) factory revenues grew 3.0% year over year totalling $1.0 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014 (4Q14).

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Purpose-Built Backup Appliance Tracker, for the full year, factory revenue was up 4.0%, to $3.26 billion in 2014.

Total PBBA open systems factory revenue increased 3.4% year over year in 4Q14 with revenues totaling $902.2 million while the mainframe market experienced a decline of -0.8% for the same period.

Total worldwide PBBA capacity shipped, for 4Q14, reached 924 petabytes, an increase of 40.3% year over year, while annual capacity was up 42.8% to 2.68 exabytes.

"Growth in the worldwide PBBA market remained strong in the fourth quarter, hitting the billion dollar mark for the first time in a given quarter," says Liz Conner, Research Manager, Storage Systems, IDC.

"An advancement of software features, allowing for greater flexibility, data tiering, file sharing, and data analytics, as well as an increase in integrated systems and a wider geographical dispersion have resulted in PBBA systems being recognised by end users as an integral part of their data protection strategy."

During 4Q14, EMC maintained its global lead in the overall PBBA market with 63.8% revenue share in the fourth quarter, followed by Symantec with 11.5% share.

IBM and HP posted 6.7% and 4.0% market share, respectively while Quantum retained the number five PBBA vendor position with a 2.3% share of the worldwide market.