NAS Market Growing at a Rapid Pace

Network-attached storage (NAS) market size was estimated at over USD 6 billion in 2019, growing at around 20 percent CAGR from 2018 to 2024.

The NAS market is growing at a rapid pace and is likely to clock robust growth over the forecast timeline due to the rapidly increasing applications of Big Data analytics and data mining, surging popularity of NAS solutions in home/consumer applications, and the growing adoption of cloud-based NAS solutions. The businesses are increasingly storing large volumes of data onto these storage systems because of the enhanced benefits of scalability and ease-of-access. These solutions offer a scalable and comprehensive data-storage mechanism to collectively store and retrieve critical data associated with different systems operating within a network.

According to reports, the adoption of NAS solutions for home-based applications is going up massively with the large amount of data being generated from various home entertainment systems. With a large volume of data being downloaded from on-demand entertainment systems, and the increasing demand from consumers to store and share digital content between multimedia devices, such as tablets, smartphones, and laptops, the demand for NAS systems for home-based applications is likely to rapidly increase between 2018 and 2024. Also, NAS systems are increasingly utilized for storing and serving multimedia content for automated backups, centralized storage applications in smart homes for security systems, smart TVs, and other Internet of Things components.

NAS market, by architecture
Traditional (scale-up) architecture segment accounted for around 75 percent of the NAS market in 2019 due to the large-scale deployment of legacy storage systems in enterprises. The scale-out NAS architecture is expected to grow with a CAGR of over 35 percent between 2018 and 2024, which can be attributed to the benefits of scale-out NAS architecture over traditional systems, in terms of reduced hardware complexity and the flexibility of scaling performance and capacity on an as-needed basis. As the data in scale-out architecture is distributed across many storage controllers, the system’s clustered framework ensures an enhanced availability of storage resources.

One of the key benefits of scale-out NAS architecture is that it allows users to move and manage petabytes of data through a single distributed file-system along with the global namespace. This allows users to maintain multiple nodes across data centers in different geographic locations. Due to such enhanced flexibility and availability features, the scale-out NAS market is expected to register a high growth between 2018 and 2024.

NAS market, by design
The 12-bay to 20-bay NAS segment held around 40 percent share of the overall NAS market in 2019 due to the large-scale adoption of medium-configuration NAS solutions by SMEs and small office/home office (SOHO) customers. These systems are ideal for SMEs for performance-oriented storage that is reliable, fast, and secure. On the other hand, the 1-bay to 8-bay NAS market is expected to register the fastest growth over the forecast timeline. This accelerated growth can be attributed to the increasing adoption of basic NAS systems for home/consumer applications. Compared to USB storage devices for data storage and file sharing, NAS solutions offer consumers a more convenient alternative for sharing multimedia content such as photos, music, and videos. With a large storage capacity and excellent file transfer speed, these solutions prove to be critical resources for data backup and recovery for home-based applications.

NAS market, by deployment model
The on-premise deployment segment dominated the overall NAS market in 2019 due to large-scale deployment of legacy scale-up network storage systems for data-storage backup functions. With the increasing popularity of cloud-computing platforms for scalable data storage applications, the cloud-deployment model market is likely to register a high growth with a CAGR of over 23 percent over the forecast period.

Hybrid deployment market is projected to register the fastest growth between 2019 and 2024, as it offers the convenience of data residency for storing mission-critical data on-premise, facilitating the cloud-based storage of non-critical data in a scalable architecture.

NAS market, by application
The consumer NAS market is projected to grow at around 25 percent CAGR during the forecast period due to the increasing popularity of NAS solutions for data sharing, backup, and recovery purposes among consumers. The system provides a scalable and affordable mechanism to backup multimedia content from personal devices such as smartphones, PCs, laptops, smart TVs, and home-automation systems. As these devices can be used as multimedia hubs for storing, accessing, and sharing photos, documents, music, and video among family members, their adoption is likely to accelerate swiftly during the forecast timeline.

BFSI applications were valued at around USD 1.5 billion in 2019, and are expected to maintain a major NAS market share by 2024. The majority share is attributed to the large-scale deployment of the storage technology by financial institutions to store huge volumes of financial data of their customers, requiring a scalable and a robust storage infrastructure. IT and telecom market is projected to register the fastest growth between 2019 and 2024 with the growing uptake of NAS systems for efficiently managing the increasing data-storage requirements between a diverse set of nodes operating in distinct locations.

NAS market, by region
North America is projected to dominate the global NAS market throughout the forecast period due to the early adoption of advanced storage technologies by enterprises in the region, coupled with rapidly growing digitization across various end-use sectors. With a rapidly-growing e-commerce ecosystem in the area, especially in the U.S., the demand for NAS solutions in the region is likely to grow consistently at around 20 percent CAGR between 2018 and 2024.

Asia-Pacific NAS market is expected to register the fastest growth during the timeline due to the increasing awareness regarding the benefits of NAS solutions among SMEs, favorable government initiatives for digitization of economy, and administrative framework along with the rapid emergence of technology startups, demanding affordable and scalable data storage solutions.

Competitive market share
Companies operating in the NAS market are focusing on designing and commercializing solutions aimed at different sections of the customer landscape with respect to the storage-capability requirements and the desired level of integration capabilities. The companies are also emphasizing on geographical expansion to introduce their products in new untapped markets with a potential for favorable uptake of NAS solutions. Some of the key players operating in the NAS market are Western Digital, QNAP, Netgear, Thecus, Synology, Buffalo Americas, Seagate, DELL EMC, Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, NetApp, Zyxel, Cisco, D-Link, Asustor, Infortrend, Avere Systems, SoftNas, Pansas, and Broadberry.