Data storage is becoming the top priority in IT budgets across the board. A recent survey of CIOs revealed 68% of them plan to increase storage spending in 2012, making the category the highest priority, followed by security at 65% and servers at 51%, said Andrew Nowinski, Research Analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co.
“If you look at IDC, they’ve forecasted total available storage capacity to increase by a factor of 12 times through 2020, up to about 15 zettabytes. But the digital universe is actually expected to grow by a factor of 29 times during that same period. So that disparity creates an obvious shortage of capacity,” Nowinski said.
NetApp (NTAP) is Nowinski’s favorite “buy”-rated stock in the data storage sector. He says the company has three new product cycles: the ONTAP 8.1 operating system, the FAS2240 low-end platform to address new markets and the Engenio product line, all of which are expected to result in better comps from low 2011 numbers.
“NetApp has had arguably lagging growth over the same four-quarter period. So in my opinion, they have very easy comps that should start to anniversary in the July quarter, which should enable them to deliver strong year-over-year core product growth in comparison to EMC’s more difficult comps and their lower growth levels,” Nowinski said.
Report Overview: Data hosting centers and data storage
September 15, 2016
Interview Highlights: Hendi Susanto of Gabelli & Company on Data Hosting Centers and Data Storage
September 19, 2016
Interview Highlights: David B. Rodgers of Robert W. Baird & Co. on Data Hosting Centers and Data Storage
September 20, 2016
Interview Highlights: Ryan Hutchinson of Guggenheim Securities on Data Hosting Centers and Data Storage
September 20, 2016
Interview Highlights: Erik Suppiger of JMP Securities on Data Hosting Centers and Data Storage
September 21, 2016
