I stayed up late the other night to watch game seven of the NBA Playoff series. As soon as the fourth quarter ended, before any Lakers fans had even started setting fires in the streets of L.A., I got an AP alert on my phone that the Celtics had lost. Five minutes later, highlights from the game were on ESPN and the cable news channels; and early the next morning, I read about it in the newspaper. I witnessed it myself, then watched and read as others analyzed it.
I had the same feeling as I read Timothy Prickett Morgan’s story on IT Jungle last week about the rebound in sales of servers and storage arrays. I have a courtside seat to that game; I see FalconStor customers every day who are emerging from the economic downturn and directing IT budgets toward storage expansion and data protection. I love seeing analysts and media confirming the trends we’re seeing.
In his article, Prickett Morgan recounts the findings of a recent Gartner study, which analyzed activity in the server and storage markets in the first quarter of 2010. Here are some of the highlights:
- Server revenues rose by 6 percent to $10.75 billion, and server shipments increased 23 percent to 2.12 million units.
- Companies are clearly focusing on protecting their growing data; EMC widened its lead over IBM in Q1 – primarily due to sales by its newly acquired Data Domain division, which brought in $124.6 million in the first three months of the year.
We’re watching the game heat up, too. We’re seeing a growing number of companies eager to solve their data protection, deduplication and disaster recovery needs NOW. Business ranging from healthcare to manufacturing and everything in between seem to be viewing 2010 as the year to get it done, and they’re embracing the promise of open architecture solutions to move down the court toward that goal.
