New Delhi, Jun 30 (IANS): Indias external storage market witnessed a decline of 20.6 per cent (YoY) by vendor revenue and stood at $87.8 million in the March quarter, an IDC report said on Tuesday.

The majority of the decline in storage spending was seen in professional services, manufacturing and telecommunications organisations in the country.

"Due to COVID-19, most of the organizations have reduced their IT spending. Businesses are revisiting their CAPEX spending and would invest only if there is a pressing need, else would opt for OPEX models," said Dileep Nadimpalli, Research Manager, Enterprise Infrastructure, IDC India.

Dell Technologies continued to be the market leader with a 31.4 per cent market share, followed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) with a 15.9 per cent market share. Hitachi and IBM witnessed strong growth due to key wins from government and banking organisations.

"Organizations are moving to Public Cloud (backup and disaster recovery as a service) so that they can avoid capital spending in these hard financial times," Nadimpalli added.

All-Flash Arrays (AFA) contributed 37.6 per cent to the overall external storage systems market in the first quarter.

High-end storage systems grew by 3.7 per cent (YoY) due to increased investments from the banking and government organisations.

The entry and midrange storage segments witnessed a steep double-digit decline.

"Organisations are expected to delay their IT spending on technology refresh but would spend on new projects which would drive automation, increase performance, and optimize costs due to cash flow issues," said the IDC report.