IDC's European Storage Technologies and Strategies service focuses on the European storage systems market comprised of disk systems and tape automation. It delivers broad-spectrum publications ranking vendor performance and forecasting key market segments using dimensions such as revenue, terabytes, and units. The annual disk storage systems forecast and analysis ensures that storage systems customers have timely insight into market adoption rates and IDC's assessment of the impact on the market of alliances, acquisitions, new vendors, and technology innovation.

This service covers the following segments:

• Disk storage systems
• Tape automation systems

Throughout the year, this service will address the following topics:

• Revenue, units, and new capacity shipments
• ASPs, $/GB, and GB/unit
• RAID versus JBOD
• Installation environments (SAN/NAS/DAS)
• SAN-attachment by protocol (Fibre Channel, iSCSI, FICON/ESCON)
• Internal versus external storage
• Operating systems
• Storage system price bands
• Trends in tape automation

Our research addresses the following issues that are critical to your success:

1. How do your company's disk storage and/or tape automation systems sales compare with those of your competitors?
2. What is the country composition of the European market?
3. What products are introduced into the market and what is their potential impact?
4. How rapid is the migration to networked storage?
5. What are the challenges of servicing today's end users and what are the likely successful strategies?
6. How is the market forecast to grow over the next five years?
7. Which new tape formats will tape automation providers adopt?
8. How will disk systems ship into Fibre Channel and IP storage networks?
9. What is the breakdown of the disk systems market by price band?

IDC's European Storage Technologies and Strategies service examines how storage vendors are positioning themselves to compete in the European market. This service reviews strategies, market positioning, and future direction of several providers in the storage systems market, including:

3Par, Adaptec, BlueArc, Bull, Compellent, Dell, Dot Hill, EMC, Exanet, Fujitsu Siemens, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, Isilon, Lefthand Networks, NetApp, OnStor, Overland Data, Panasas, Pillar Data Systems, Quantum, Sony, Sun Microsystems, and Tandberg Data.

This service focuses on the following core research. In addition to the insight provided in this service, IDC may conduct additional research on specific topics, or emerging market segments, via research offerings that require additional IDC funding and client investment.:

Data is delivered as a dynamic Excel pivot table and in an annual study. The Excel pivot table provides an interactive and dynamic tool to analyze the data by its many dimensions. The annual study provides additional written analysis on the markets and vendor performance.

This study contains written analysis on events in the European storage market viewed from vendor and country perspectives. It also contains printed tables of markets by country and segment, and includes five-year forecasts.

This document is intended to offer a high-level view of market trends and supplier shares midway through the year.

Qualitative insight into the market, with competitor positions and market dynamics.

Five-year forecast and analysis study.

These documents analyze each vendor's product announcements and evaluate the product's strategic position and competition in the market.

These documents characterize current and long-term trends in the storage industry.

IDC offers a complete market intelligence solution customized to meet your business requirements. The array of products and services available to you includes:

• The opportunity to have your specific questions answered through personal interaction with industry experts who cover the topics and markets in your service
• Around-the-clock access to our market intelligence on idc.com, IDC's personalized Web experience
• A view of the market's future with 12 months of continuous intelligence about its direction and the reasons behind it, along with actionable advice for taking advantage of existing and emerging opportunities
• Complimentary/special admission price to IDC's annual Directions conference, where you'll hear our latest forecasts and network with IDC analysts and other industry professionals
• Complimentary invitations to monthly executive telebriefings, interactive forums designed to provide you with insights about research and strategies directly from IDC analysts

To find out how our flexible packaging options can meet your specific business needs, please contact your IDC account manager.

As a privately held company, IDC believes that our customers are our primary constituency. A large percentage of every revenue dollar is reinvested back into our products, including more analysts, more geographic coverage, and extensive primary research.

Our steady growth over the past 10-plus years reflects our commitment to investing in our customers.