By Ron Chen, Correspondent ASEAN Region

Following a considerable decline in 2020, the enterprise storage market in Japan will recover in 2021 and maintain a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.3 per cent in its value over the forecast period 2019-2024, driven by the need among enterprises for efficient storage power to support their digital transformation initiatives, says GlobalData.

According to GlobalData, the enterprise storage market size in Japan declined year-on-year (Y-o-Y) in 2020 due to the disruption in business operations caused by COVID-19 restrictions and the subsequent drop in revenues, which compelled most enterprises to cut down their ICT investments. Slowdown or postponements of new office set-ups due to the pandemic also had a negative impact on the market during the year.

Technology Analyst at GlobalData, Nidhi Gupta says: “This is put to perspective by GlobalData’s recent ICT decision makers’ survey* covering enterprises from Japan, which reveals that 48 per cent of respondents from the country believed that their enterprise ICT spending would decrease in 2020 following the COVID-19 outbreak while about 19 per cent respondents believed that it would increase.”

However, recovering economic and business environment, gradually improving business confidence and the subsequent acceleration in digital transformation efforts of the enterprises will help revive enterprise spending on ICT infrastructure, including storage in Japan in 2021.

As enterprises re-prioritize their digital transformation initiatives through investments on disruptive technologies, the need for advanced storage power necessary to capture huge data sets that these technologies are typically associated with will also help drive growth in Japan’s storage in coming years.

Innovations in storage solutions such as software-defined storage, high performance capabilities, and faster access to data that can handle next-generation workloads for big data, artificial intelligence and virtual infrastructure will also boost enterprise storage market in the country over the next few years.

Ms Gupta concludes: “Storage hardware/resource will remain the largest market segment by value in the overall enterprise storage market in Japan through the forecast period. Software-defined storage will be the fastest growing category due to its advantages over traditional hardware solutions in terms of flexibility, scalability of storage power, security, and interoperability with legacy storage infrastructure.”