The enterprise storage market in Malaysia registered a year-on-year (Y-o-Y) decline of 9.2% in its total value in 2020 due to the impact of COVID-19 disruptions on enterprise ICT spending, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

According to GlobalData, the enterprise storage market size in the country reached US$641m by the end of 2020, down by about 20% from what it was estimated before the COVID-19 outbreak.

Nidhi Gupta, Technology Analyst at GlobalData says: “The uncertainty in business environment caused by COVID-19 restrictions and the subsequent drop in revenues have forced most enterprises in the country to take a conservative approach to ICT investments, which has affected their spending on enterprise storage during the year.”

This is put to perspective by GlobalData’s recent ICT decision makers’ survey* covering enterprises from Malaysia, which reveals that 71% of respondents believed that their enterprise ICT spending on storage would either remain flat or decrease in 2020 following the COVID-19 outbreak.

Slowdown or postponements of new office set-ups due to the pandemic also had a negative impact on the enterprise storage demand in the country for most part of the year.

Ms. Gupta adds: “With most enterprises in the country beginning to get adjusted to the new normal, exuding improved business confidence and re-prioritizing their investments on digital transformation efforts, their spending on storage solutions and services is expected to recover in 2021 and reach US$907.2m by the end of 2024, reflecting a CAGR of 5.2% over the forecast period 2019-2024.”

As enterprises revive their investments on disruptive technologies like big data, artificial intelligence, automation and blockchain as part of their digital transformation initiatives, the need for storage power necessary to capture huge data sets that these technologies are typically associated with will increase going forward, helping drive growth in the overall storage market.

Storage hardware/resources comprising all-flash hybrid arrays, hard-disk drives, network attached storage and other storage devices will remain the largest market segment, in terms of value, in the overall enterprise storage market, through the forecast period.

Although currently a smaller segment, in terms of value, software defined storage platforms and applications have been witnessing considerable traction in their demand in recent times and will see their market value increase at a CAGR of 7.5% over the forecast period.

Ms Gupta concludes: “Benefits such as freedom from hardware vendor lock-in, remote accessibility, high level of flexibility and scalability of storage power, and interoperability with legacy storage infrastructure will boost the popularity of software defined storage market in the country.”