IDC: EMEA Flash Storage Market Registers $2.9Bn Value In 2014

According to a research by International Data Corporation, (IDC), Fresh Storage is one of the unruly technologies that is altering the activities in the European Storage Market. Despite the fact that numerous retailers have only accessed the European market in the last 12 to 18 months and it is a moderately new innovation, its client adoption is already taking off.

The research has indicated that the demand for flash systems is continuing to increase together with performance-hungry workloads such as databases and virtual infrastructures deployment being deployed on flash systems.

Being a moderately original storage market division, the external flash storage market in EMEA is likely to achieve an aggregate estimation of $2.9 billion in 2015, indicating a 32% of year-on-year growth.

Western Europe represented approximately 75% of the total EMEA flash market value in 2014, as the acceptances increased from United Kingdom to France, Germany, the Nordics and Benelux, customarily the first adopters of the new technologies, closely followed by Southern Europe.

CEMA (Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa) sticks on this pattern with Western Europe regarding HFA infiltration in EMEA with the great acceptance in Israel, South Africa, Russia and the Gulf countries. AFA interest is exceptionally incipient in the developing markets, with critical development potential from the Middle East sub region.

Speaking on the study, Silvia Cosso, Western Europe Storage Analyst, noted that European societies have rapidly accepted flash storage systems in their performance –sensitive workloads, adding that competitive differentiation will originate from data management price and competences because the startups are pushing AFA into the market, as key retailers have flash-powered array in their collections.

The estimates of the study indicate that:

The flash storage systems market is a rapidly developing section of the EMEA storage market, with a 15% CAGR flash-optimized market value growth from 2013 to 2018.

For the forecast period, AFA is expected to have a 58% CAGR growth, which will be part of EMEA’s 15% total growth come 2018.

The estimate further indicates that EMEA’s growth will be powered by lowering flash $/GB value, which is expected to fall by more than 70% from 2014 to 2018.

The CEMA storage analyst at IDC, Marina Kostova said that HFA systems will be at the forefront in the EMEA market, as some tier 2 and all tier 1 will be changing to hybrid in 2018. Kostova maintained that general-purpose workloads are expected to move to AFA, based on reducing costs and future improvements in non-volatile flash memory.

HFA and AFA are flash-powered arrays.

HFA (Hybrid flash arrays) has the ability to achieve a nearly similar performance with an all-flash system. It, however, has a relatively lower $/GB, making it the main category in the market.

AFA (All-flash array) has a high $/GB compared to spinning media, hence, outstanding as a single-point solution in the data center. In spite of stationing a great 302% year-on-year growth in user value for 2014, its broad acceptance was hindered.