Storage Software Stays Hot

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Driven by compliance, data protection and management needs, storage software continues to grow more than twice as fast as the storage hardware market.

According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, the storage software market grew 14.9% year over year to $2.1 billion in the first quarter of 2005, the sixth straight quarter of double-digit growth.

“Continued customer spending on software for data protection, storage resource management and compliance has helped to drive this positive start to 2005,” stated Rhoda Phillips, research manager for IDC Storage Software. “Spending growth related to data protection, including replication, backup, and archive software, is an indicator of customers continued concerns about application availability, data management, and business continuity.”

In the first quarter of 2005, the storage resource management and the backup and archive software markets continued to represent the two largest storage software markets, accounting for a third of the market each. Storage replication software posted 19.7% year-over-year growth, and the file systems software market grew 25.4%.

Network Appliance continued to do just about everything right in the storage space, vaulting into the top five with 61.1% year-over-year revenue growth. EMC remained atop the pack with a 30% revenue share and 17.9% growth rate.

Veritas, which faces a shareholder vote later this month on its proposed merger with Symantec, maintained the number two spot with 21.4% revenue share, growing 11.4% year over year. IBM finished third with 8.6% revenue share, and HP rounded out the top five with a 6.6% revenue share. Computer Associates, meanwhile, dropped out of the top five.

Top 5 Vendors
Worldwide Storage Software Revenue, First Quarter 2005

(Revenues are in millions)
Vendor Q1 2005
revenue
Market share Q1 2004
revenue
Market share Revenue
growth
EMC $625 30.0% $530 29.3% 17.9%
Veritas $445 21.4% $399 22.1% 11.4%
IBM $178 8.6% $170 9.4% 4.8%
Network Appliance $139 6.7% $87 4.8% 61.1%
Hewlett-Packard $137 6.6% $126 7.0% 8.1%
Others $556 26.7% $499 27.5% 11.5%
All vendors $2,080 100% $1,811 100% 14.9%
Source: IDC, June 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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