The disk storage market in Central and Eastern Europe (Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Slovakia) grew by 22.5% in revenue to $418.10 mln in 2003 and is expected to expand a further 17.5% in 2004. According to IDC, unit shipments rose by 12.8%, while terabyte capacity surged by 27.7% last year. As storage technology continues to improve, the rate of memory growth will exceed that of shipment growth. This year, while IDC expects shipments to increase by just under 21%, terabyte capacity will rise 31.5%.
Direct attached storage (DAS) dominated the disk storage market in Central and Eastern Europe last year, accounting for more than 55% of total disk storage revenue and over 74% of capacity. This figure includes DAS for both internal and external systems, with internal DAS accounting for more than three times as much capacity but only around 19% more revenue. In contrast, external storage systems – such as storage area networks (SANs), network attached storage (NAS), and external DAS – represented 69.2% of disk storage revenue in 2003 but only 41.4% of capacity in 2003.