New market share reports confirm HP’s leadership in tape

[StorageExperts]

By Simon Watkins, WW Product Marketing Manager, Backup, Recovery & Archive (BURA), HP Storage

New market share numbers from analysts IDC and SCCG confirm that HP continues to lead in worldwide open systems tape drive, tape automation (1-100 slots) and tape media markets. I thought we’d look today at why market share matters in tape, highlight some key market trends and spotlight where and why we continue to win.

Measuring the success of a business based on revenue results and other internal key performance indicators doesn’t tell the whole story. Satisfaction with revenue growth can be misleading if performance is below par relative to the competition.

Market share tells a different story than revenue reports because market share is an indicator of market competitiveness. This is particularly true in a mature industry such as tape where achieving revenue growth is often a zero sum game and is incumbent on taking share from the competition.

According to IDC and SCCG’s recently released Worldwide Quarterly Tape Trackers for the second half of 2014 (2H 2014), HP continues to lead in worldwide open systems tape drive, tape automation and tape media markets. The latest market share results confirm that HP is:

• #1 in stand-alone tape drives – with more than 2x the revenue of the nearest competitor and a year on year (Y/Y) share gain of 7.7 percentage points in 2H 2014
• #1 in tape autoloaders (1-20 slots) – with 1.5x the revenue of the nearest competitor
• #1 in tape libraries (1-100 slots) – with a Y/Y share gain of one percentage point in 2H 2014
• #1 in original manufacturer tape drive shipments – with 1 in 2 of every tape drive that shipped worldwide in 2H CY14 manufactured by HP
• #1 in LTO tape media – with almost 2x the revenue of the nearest competitor

IDC’s report also confirms that HP is transforming the double-digit growth mid-range (101-500 slots) tape automation market. The HP StoreEver MSL6480 mid-range tape library delivered triple digit revenue growth, year on year, in 2H 2014. As a result the MSL6480 took more than 9 percentage points of share year on year. This trend was particularly pronounced in the Asia Pacific region where the MSL6480 claimed over 16 percentage points of share year on year.

Why is HP winning in tape?

Innovation: A key reason for our share leadership is product innovation. A great example is the HP StoreEver MSL6480 mid-range tape library. The MSL6480 has disrupted the mid-range tape market with a powerful combination of unrivalled scalability, density and performance at a highly competitive price point. HP launched the MSL6480 with the bold assertion that it represented the next era of tape storage. Was this purely marketing spin? Definitely not, if the MSL6480’s rapid customer adoption and continued market share growth is anything to go by. Check out this blog for some of the many reasons why the MSL6480 sets the new gold standard in mid-range tape and is resonating with customers and partners across all major industries around the world.

Other striking examples of HP innovation in tape include tape manageability software, tape as NAS active archive solutions, tested to extremes LTO tape media and partner solution integration.

Scale: Another important driver for our success in tape is the scale of the StoreEver product set. HP offers the broadest tape portfolio in the industry today, serving every sector of the market from SMB through to mid-range and on to enterprise customers. Our product set encompasses tape media to standalone tape drives through entry-level, mid-range and enterprise-class tape libraries. And this broad portfolio gives our customers a wide choice of capacity and performance options, price points, form factor choices and levels of manageability and availability, all delivered with unique HP technologies in the areas of reliability and performance.

 

An integrated Backup, Recovery and Archive (BURA) approach: An additional reason for why HP is winning in tape is provided by HP’s comprehensive range of disk, tape and software data protection solutions. These enable customers to maximize the value they get from their data over its entire lifecycle, while minimizing total cost of ownership. This broad Backup, Recovery and Archive (BURA) portfolio enables us to play the role of trusted advisor, focused on delivering the right answer to your problems as opposed to operating from a single product angle.

Market share leadership: why does it matter to you?    

Here is the most important message that lies at the heart of this market leadership data: experience matters for our customers.

HP’s market leadership represents sustained industry leadership, investment in innovation and deep tape storage expertise. It also positions us as a partner with a broader frame of reference and a wider regional and vertical market presence.

We remain laser focused on driving StoreEver tape market share leadership and will continue to invest in the new use cases and ecosystems that take advantage of the cost and durability of tape based storage.

Learn more

For more information head here: www.hp.com/go/storeever

*1-100 slot tape libraries

[#2]

its a great news and amazing performance by BURA team - maitaining leadership in Tape. Congratulations BURA team. we need to work hard to get us to leadership in D2D space as well.