Hewlett-Packard has seen some of the biggest growth in the external storage systems market, according to data provided by company officials and research firms IDC and Gartner. Wikibon’s top analyst Dave Vellante looked into the numbers and drew his own conclusions in the first post of the Storage Wars series.

Vellante noted that HP is doing exceptionally well for a traditional vendor that’s going through a major transition to adopt the current trends in IT.  M&A account for a big part of this strategy, and it looks as if it paid off.  3PAR has seen triple digit growth in the fourth quarter, and HP has seen a total of 11 percent growth in external storage systems sales.  This is made more significant by the fact that IDC reported competitors NetApp, Dell and others have seen very little growth – and remained flat or declined, for the most part, during the same period.

This momentum extended to the high-end of the market, where HP generated more than 71 percent additional revenue, adding up to a three percent growth in market share.

“HP’s 71% growth includes its XP line (OEMd from Hitachi) and as such it suggests that 3PAR is growing very rapidly even in the high-end segment, which has been a slower growth market for years. The point is the only way to grow in this space is to rapidly gain share. For years, HP has been a minor player in the expensive price bands and probably still has less than 10% marketshare. But, at these growth rates, HP is tracking IBM and HDS and knowing Donatelli he has EMC in his sights.”

HP has been making aggressive pushes to keep up with the storage market. One of the more significant ones lately was the launch of its first dedupe offerings based on in-house technology.