EMC Paces Strong Storage Software Market

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The storage software market capped a strong 2004 with 15% year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter, driven by data protection and compliance demands, according to IDC.

The storage software market grew more than $1 billion last year to $7.9 billion, a 16.1% growth rate, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker.

“The storage software market ended on a very positive note, continuing its momentum of double-digit growth,” stated Bill North, research director for storage software at IDC. “This pattern is fueled by the increased business investment in data protection and management, as well as a greater awareness of compliance requirements.”

EMC’s software strategy continued to pay off, with 25% revenue growth in the fourth quarter and nearly 27% for the year, beating the other top vendors handily (see tables below).

EMC led the overall storage software market in the fourth quarter with 31.7% revenue share, gaining the greatest year-over-year market share among the top five vendors. Veritas — in the process of being acquired by Symantec — maintained second place with a 21.7% revenue share, growing 11.4% year-over-year. CA and IBM finished in a statistical tie for the third position, with 8.8% and 8.2% revenue share, respectively. HP rounded out the top 5 with 6.6% revenue share for the quarter. EMC and IBM posted the strongest quarterly results among the top five.

For the full year, EMC led the overall market with 30.9% revenue share, followed by Veritas with a 21.9% revenue share.

The storage resource management market posted the strongest fourth quarter gain, with 19.7% year-over-year growth. The back-up and archive software market continued to represent the largest functional market, growing 9.5% year over year. The storage replication software and file system software markets grew 17.2% and 14.2% year over year in the fourth quarter, respectively.

“The strong growth rate for storage resource management is a result of the need to manage the increasing scale and complexity of storage systems as well as the heterogeneous storage environment,” North said. “As traditional point-in-time backup and storage replication move closer together, these combined markets have contributed to the market’s healthy growth in 2004. IDC expects the overall market to continue in this direction over the next few years.”

Top 5 Vendors
Worldwide Storage Software Revenue, Fourth Quarter 2004

(Revenues are in millions)
Vendor Q4 2004
revenue
Market share Q4 2003
revenue
Market share Revenue
growth
EMC (includes Legato) $693 31.7% $554 29.1% 25.1%
Veritas $475 21.7% $427 22.4% 11.4%
Computer Associates $193 8.8% $174 9.1% 11.1%
IBM $180 8.2% $154 8.1% 16.7%
Hewlett-Packard $143 6.6% $137 7.2% 4.7%
Others $501 22.9% $455 24.0% 10.0%
 
All vendors $2,185 100% $1,901 100% 15.0%

Source: IDC, March 2005

Top 5 Vendors
Worldwide Storage Software Revenue, Full Year 2004

(Revenues are in millions)
Vendor 2004
revenue
Market share 2003
revenue
Market share Revenue
growth
EMC (including Legato) $2,437 30.9% $1,921 28.3% 26.9%
Veritas $1,730 21.9% $1,474 21.7% 17.3%
CA $659 8.4% $585 8.6% 12.7%
IBM $617 7.8% $565 8.3% 9.1%
HP $527 6.7% $468 6.9% 12.5%
Others $1,922 24.4% $1,784 26.2% 7.8%
 
All vendors $7,892 100% $6,797 100% 16.1%

Source: IDC, March 2005

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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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