EMC, Veritas Dominate Storage Software

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The storage software market remains very much a two-horse race, according to the latest numbers from IDC.

EMC and Veritas dominated the space in the second quarter, with 32.5% revenue share and 22.6%, respectively, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker (see table below), which measures software sales in areas such as replication, storage resource management and backup and archiving. No other vendor garnered more than 7% of the market.

EMC posted 30.5% year-over-year growth in the second quarter, adding 3.4 points to its market share. Veritas added 1.2 points to its standing with 22.6% year-over-year revenue growth.

The rest of the top five — IBM, HP and Computer Associates — all lost market share in the second quarter, with only HP showing year-over-year growth. CA’s 13.3% year-over-year revenue decline was enough to drop the company into fifth place from third, but IDC called the results a statistical tie between the three companies for third place.

The overall worldwide storage software market grew 16.9% year over year to $1.85 billion in total revenue in the second quarter, driven by strong demand in storage resource management software, IDC said. It was the third consecutive quarter of growth for the sector.

SRM Nabs The Top Spot

Storage resource management is now the largest functional market of storage software, growing more than 30% year over year, according to IDC. Backup and archive remained healthy, posting 9.2% year-over-year growth. Storage replication software and file system software also posted strong growth, up 13.5% and 18.5%, respectively.

It was the first time IDC included file system software in the storage software report. Previously, IDC reported file system software under the “Serverware” software market.

Device and SAN management software use grew by 36% over the second quarter of 2003, said Bill North, IDC’s storage software research director. “This dramatic growth, driven primarily by customer need to support larger and more complex storage networks, combined with a gradual decline in the more mature backup and archive software market, made storage resource management the largest of the storage software markets for the first time,” North said.

“Effective storage resource management is the foundation for delivering an efficient, reliable, and highly available storage infrastructure, regardless of company size,” he added.

Top 5 Vendors
Worldwide Storage Software Revenue, Second Quarter of 2004

(Revenues are in millions)
Vendor Q2 2004
revenue
Market share Q2 2003
revenue
Market share Revenue
growth
EMC (a) $602 32.5% $461 29.1% 30.5%
Veritas $418 22.6% $339 21.4% 23.4%
IBM $130 7.0% $134 8.5% -3.0%
HP $130 7.0% $120 7.6% 8.8%
CA $123 6.6% $142 8.9% -13.3%
Others $448 24.2% $389 24.5% 15.3%
All vendors $1,852 100% $1,585 100% 16.9%
Notes:
(a) EMC figures reflect the combined results of EMC and Legato.

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, Q204

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Paul Shread
Paul Shread
eSecurity Editor Paul Shread has covered nearly every aspect of enterprise technology in his 20+ years in IT journalism, including an award-winning series on software-defined data centers. He wrote a column on small business technology for Time.com, and covered financial markets for 10 years, from the dot-com boom and bust to the 2007-2009 financial crisis. He holds a market analyst certification.

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