Content Digitization Continues Driving Data Storage

February 24, 2012

Enterprise demand for data storage remains growing as more data migrates from analog records into the digital data centers, and financial, entertainment, health care and social media companies are leading the content digitization demand surge, says Jim Yin, Equity Research Analyst at Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ.

“IDC projects that the amount of bits of data storage continues to grow at its historical growth rate, somewhere around 45% per year on a compound annual growth rate basis,” Yin said. “That’s partially offset by the lower cost of data storage – about 30% – so longer term the industry is expected to grow somewhere around the high-single-digits or low teens.

Yin points to VMWare (VMW) as one on the companies best positioned to take advantage of the virtualization software market. VMW currently has between 85% to 95% share, and it is a preferred platform in the industry given its compatibility and high-quality performance.

“The key advantage of VMware, in our view, is that you can think of the company as somewhat platform neutral or independent, so regardless of whether you’re running Linux, Unix or Microsoft operating systems, VMware will support them,” Yin said. “Also maybe has the highest performance.”