Double digit growth for backup appliances

The EMEA purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) market finished the second quarter with an increased 26.8% year-on-year to reach $239.7 million, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Purpose-Built Backup Appliance Tracker. This is the second period in a row of double-digit growth for the market, and the first half of 2018 ended with a 19% increase compared to the first half of 2017.

"Open systems continue to be the driving force for the EMEA PBBA market, with an increase of 25.7% year-on-year in vendor revenue to reach $214.9 million," said Jimena Sisa, senior research analyst, EMEA Storage Systems, IDC. "Meanwhile, mainframe systems also increased sales, leading to a strong growth year-on-year of 37.3% in this segment during the second quarter."

Regional Highlights

Western Europe

PBBA vendor revenue in Western Europe increased 26.6% year-on-year in 2Q18 to $184.3 million.  Open systems and mainframe systems both show strong annual increases of 24.3% and 48.6% respectively. Target systems was the main driver of open systems with an increase of 28.7% year-on-year, while integrated systems reported a 16.6% rise year-on-year.

There was robust PBBA spending in France and the DACH market, with year-on-year growth of 46.7% and 41.6% respectively.

"Digital transformation is forcing European enterprises to invest in projects aiming to modernize their datacenter with solutions that offers not only data quality and validation solutions that help them make the data more accurate and compliant, but also to incorporate data management solutions to give enterprises agile and unified access to the various data formats across multiple platforms and provide IT control, stability, reliability, and availability that are equally critical for the digital transformation success, said Sisa. "This has helped boost the PBBA market in Western Europe as some vendors have incorporated data control, management solutions, and the ability to tier to the cloud into their product portfolio."

CEMA

The Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) PBBA market was in tune with overall EMEA vendor revenue trend, recording 27.3% growth YoY in 2Q18. The main boost came from open systems (both target and integrated) while mainframe solutions stayed flat.

At a subregional level, both Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Middle East and Africa (MEA) PBBA markets grew in revenue, but the CEE region outperformed MEA, increasing by nearly 40% on the back of heightened demand in bigger countries. Most vendors recorded growth across the subregion, strongly supported by the channel, while the performance in MEA varied more significantly from country to country.

"Clients are increasingly looking not only for backup but very much for fast data restore, which is crucial for their business," said Marina Kostova, research manager, IDC CEMA. "This turns out to be one of the biggest advantages for PBBA which will sustain demand, notwithstanding emerging new backup technologies and approaches. This trend is especially valid for CEMA, where cloud penetration is slower compared to Western Europe and the major vendors still invest extensively in this segment."