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According to market researcher IDC, while EMC’s results were buoyed by its acquisition of Legato, the overall market performed well, with its second straight quarter of year-over-year growth.
There was across-the-board growth in the space, as all of the major storage software segments posted double-digit revenue growth in the first quarter of 2004 compared to the same quarter in 2003, IDC said in a statement.
Although the back-up and archive software market remained the leading segment and grew 22 percent in Q1, growth among the independent niches was led by storage resource management (SRM), which grew by nearly a third (32.3 percent). The storage replication software and file system software markets grew 18.1 percent and 12.4 percent, respectively.
The financial evidence points to the notion that customers remain focused on preserving and replicating their files to meet the often stringent requirements of federal record-keeping rules, such as HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and SEC 17a-4.
Bill North, research director for storage software at IDC, said he expects continued growth in the space throughout 2004 and noted that SRM software, which helps increase operational efficiency and improve storage asset utilization, continues to be a popular sell.
EMC, which grabbed 2.7 percentage points from Q1 2003 en route to posting a total market share of 30.1 percent, earned $556 million on Q1 2004 compared to $411 earned for the same frame last year. That figure was $7 million less than what EMC earned in Q4 2003, but still highlights the success of the company’s information lifecycle management strategy for managing data.
VERITAS Software came in second with 22.8 percent revenue share, watching its sales grow from $340 million in Q1 2003 to $421 million for the same quarter this year. The EMC rival is winning customers over with its utility computing approach to give users greater control over their resources.
Computer Associates held the third slot, posting revenue growth of $36 million, from $139 to $175 million for the Q1 20003 to Q1 2004 period. CA currently holds 9.5 percent of the market. IBM and HP round out the top five storage software makers, with 8.2 and 6.9 percent of the market, respectively.
Story courtesy of InternetNews.com
