Revenue from disk storage in the Czech Republic is expected to surge in 2006 according to market research firm, IDC.

On Saturday the firm released data from its observations of the country, predicting disk storage revenues to rise by 19 percent by the end of 2006 - a 6 percent increase over already impressive growth of 13 percent for 2005.

While shipments increased by just under 7 percent, the report stated, capacity soared by 71.5 percent to more than 6,000 terabytes as data continued to flood organizations across the country.

To manage the data, organizations have increasingly storage shifted to external storage centers, as opposed to housing data in-house. Internal storage comprised one-third of the market in 2004, however the number fell to one-fifth in 2005.

By contrast, revenue from external systems jumped by more than 34 percent, with the market for both storage area networks (SANs) and network attached storage more than doubling last year

SAN's meteoric rise in popularity doesn't mean vendors will abandon DAS [or

direct attached storage] any time soon, said Philip Korinek, a senior analyst at IDC.

Many small and medium-sized businesses still use DAS for its simplicity and sufficient capacity. Nevertheless, relying on DAS could prove to be a handicap to rapidly growing firms.

HP, EMC, IBM, and Dell again took the top four spots in the Czech disk storage market last year. Although HP again led the market in 2005, it lost ground to EMC, which took second in the vendor rankings, and Dell, which took fourth. While IBM maintained third, it also lost share, though its technological innovations and ramped up marketing efforts will likely make it more competitive this year and next.

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