By Ifeoma Asika, Correspondent Campuses

As per IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Storage Systems Tracker 1Q20 release, India’s external storage market witnessed a decline of 20.6 per cent Year-over-Year (YoY) by vendor revenue and stood at US$87.8 million in 1Q20 (Jan-Mar). The majority of the YoY decline in storage spending was seen in Professional Services, Manufacturing, and Telecommunications organizations in 1Q20.

“Due to COVID-19, most of the organizations have reduced their IT spending for this FY2020. Businesses are revisiting their CAPEX spending and would invest only if there is a pressing need, else would opt for OPEX models. Organizations are moving to Public Cloud (Backup and DRaaS) so that they can avoid capital spending in these hard financial times,” says Research Manager, Enterprise Infrastructure, IDC India, Dileep Nadimpalli.

All-Flash Arrays (AFA) contributed 37.6 per cent to the overall external storage systems market in 1Q20. With the advent of NVMe, more organizations are expected to adopt new-age flash technologies to address the growing demand for high-density applications such as artificial intelligence, machine learning/ deep learning, real-time analytics, etc.

High-end storage systems grew by 3.7 per cent YoY due to increased investments from Banking and Government organizations in 1Q20. The Entry and Midrange storage segments witnessed a steep double-digit YoY decline in 1Q20.

Organizations are expected to delay their IT spending on technology refresh but would spend on new projects which would drive automation, increase performance, and optimize costs due to cash flow issues. Businesses would prioritize projects such as digital transformation, IoT, artificial intelligence, etc. in the near future.