Dell declares storage market successes

Dell Technologies says its decision to double down on its storage business is paying off, with the vendor claiming it was responsible for more than half of all growth in the storage market over the last year.

Speaking to channel partners at the vendor’s Global Partner Summit (GPS) at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas, Scott Millard, Dell EMC’s VP, global channel specialty sales, said the firm was “killing it” in market share gains.

“IDC projected the storage industry would be flat, but it grew by 16 percent [to be worth] $3.7 billion; the fastest it’s grown since 2002,” he said.

Thanking partners, Millard said Dell accounted for $1.9 billion – more than half – of that growth. “That’s nearly four times NetApp and seven times more than Pure,” he said, in a shot directed at Dell EMC’s rivals.

The exec said that over the past 12 months, Dell had shared “tens of thousands of assets” with the channel for monetisation. “We backed up with over $2 billion in channel tech refresh. To put that in perspective, that’s more than Pure, Rubric and Cohesive’s total annual revenue combined. That’s a lot of leads,” he said.

Millard also said storage rebates to the channel increased to a record $70 million last year.

However, Millard acknowledged requests from partners for improvements across Dell EMC’s storage portfolio. “In the spirit of straight talk, you’ve been crystal clear – we need to innovate in the areas of mid-range data protection and cloud. We heard you. Over the past year, our innovation engine has been working at warp speed,” he told partners.

The company this week announced several new storage products for partners to take to market. These include a new Dell EMC Unity XT Series which it says is “built for a multi-cloud world”, and its first data management solution in the shape of the PowerProtect Software platform and PowerProtect X400 multi-dimensional appliance.