Quoting TechWorld

More news from an iSCSI booster. This time it comes from EqualLogic:-

"Within the last year EqualLogic grew by over 300 percent, while the iSCSI SAN market grew by 153 percent (According to IDC). As a result, EqualLogic increased its share of the iSCSI SAN market to 17 percent while NetApp and EMC’s market share declined to 26 percent and 21 percent respectively".

This looks good for EqualLogic. It contrasts with the picture painted by EMC's Chuck Hollis, a technology alliances VP, who said a recent blog entry: "In the first three quarters of 2006, $369 million of iSCSI arrays were sold. EMC (including Dell OEM) had number 1 share with 24.2 percent. The market grew at 96 percent, and we grew somewhat faster than the market."

Why the different percentages from EqualLogic? It's probably down to a 4-quarter comparison versus three.

Hollis didn't see any iSCSI invasion of EMC's enterprise accounts, although there was no application storage access disadvantage with iSCSI: "As we matched up iSCSI performance against our rather extensive knowledge of real-world workloads, it became pretty clear that a significant majority of applications could run comfortably on iSCSI with no negative performance impact whatsoever."

NetApp CEO Dave Hitz is an iSCSI booster. In his blog he recently posted this note: "The most telling statistic is that iSCSI has doubled in the last 12 months and shows no sign of slowing. The quarter-over-quarter growth rate was 15.6 percent three quarters ago, 19.1 percent two quarters ago, and 18.5 percent last quarter. Let it double two or three more times and iSCSI will definitely be a force to be reckoned with."

DataCore sold hundreds of its SANmelody low-end SAN virtualisation product in the second half of 2006. Most of those were going into SME iSCSI shops.

EqualLogic is profiting from the IP SAN growth and helping to drive it. The company reckons that VMware-driven server virtualisation is a significant iSCSI booster. A spokesperson states: "In the last year, hundreds of businesses have undertaken a transition to virtual server and storage environments, relying on EqualLogic PS Series storage arrays and VMware ESX Server 3.0."

If this momentum keeps up, and why shouldn't it, then, like DataCore, EqualLogic could rack up a thousand-plus product sales this year, perhaps even more.

Read or comment on the original, here.