Market researcher International Data Corp. has introduced a new methodology for its latest Storage Tracker report, which puts Dell Technologies Inc. at the top of the tree with more external storage revenues than those of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co., IBM Corp. and NetApp Inc. combined.

Under the old Storage Tracker format, IDC offered separate tabulated data on external enterprise storage arrays and total worldwide enterprise storage, which includes capacity sold with servers. Now, it’s offering just the tabulated data on external enterprise storage in its report, together with a general overview of the total worldwide enterprise storage systems category which it claims is more inclusive and thus increases the overall size of the market in terms of value, shipments and capacity. IDC has also applied these changes retroactively to past quarters to ensure continuity.

Overall the results were a mixed bag for storage vendors. In the total worldwide enterprise storage systems category for the fourth quarter, IDC’s Storage Tracker shows that factory revenue was down 6.7 percent year-on-year to $11.1 billion, even as total capacity shipments jumped by 18.3 percent to 52.4 exabytes. Revenues for original design manufacturers were up 3.2 percent year-on-year to $1.2 billion, while server-based storage revenues fell by 7.8 percent to $3.4 billion. External storage systems revenues also declined by 7.8 percent to $6.4 billion, though All Flash Array revenues saw solid growth of 61.2 percent year-on-year to $1.7 billion.

“While the broader enterprise storage systems market has been impacted by headwinds, companies continue to increase their investments in several key areas, such as software-defined storage, cloud-based storage, all-flash storage systems, and converged systems,” said Liz Conner, IDC’s storage systems research manager. “As a result, traditional enterprise storage vendors have aligned their portfolios to meet the shifting demands.”

IDC didn’t provide any data on the top five vendors in the total worldwide enterprise storage systems market with its report, but offered a rundown of the top sellers in the external enterprise storage systems segment, which shows Dell totally dominating the market following its acquisition of EMC Corp. last year.

The figures reveal that Dell, despite its dominance, saw its revenues fall further than the market average, as did Hitachi Ltd. and IBM. HPE’s revenues fell more or less in line with the market, while the Others category saw a revenue jump of 10.2 percent.

Images: IDC