Intel Data Center Group’s Year-over-year revenue growth also works as a good benchmark for large, enterprise storage companies. I’ve used this chart before:
Even though compute isn’t storage, compute does produce the data that storage needs to store.
So as we overlay Intel DCG on top of this picture, you can start to see the more extreme gyrations that storage has been going through, at least compared to Enterprise as a whole. In the early part of this decade, EMC Storage and NetApp product both outgrew Intel DCG over a sustained period. However that all went to hell in a basket very quickly during 2012. Not coincidentally this was when Dell was integrating Compellent (acquired in 2011) and dissolving its reseller arrangement with EMC leaving it with a rather nice portfolio of PowerVault, EqualLogic & Compellent to name but a few …..
Since then, all the enterprise storage players have performed very poorly, not only in absolute terms, but even more so relative to Intel DCG. And the key one to watch for is the gap between Intel DCG’s growth and that of EMC since mid-2014:
From mid-2014, Intel DCG outperformed EMC by a consistent 1500bps for 6 consecutive quarters. No wonder EMC agreed to be put out of its misery by Dell ……..
