Compliance Needs Lift Storage Software Market

Storage software revenue reached $7.9 billion for the full year, up 16.1 percent over the previous year, said IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker.

EMC not only held onto its lead with 30.9 percent revenue share for the year, but grew its software revenues faster than second place Veritas and third place Computer Associates.

"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," IDC Storage Software Research Director Bill North said in a statement. "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."

EMC noted that it continued to lead the two fastest growing segments of the storage software " storage resource management (SRM) and storage replication software.

The storage resource management market delivered the largest gain, jumping 19.7 percent growth in the fourth quarter, IDC said. Back-up and archive software led in the functional marketplace, jumping 9.5 percent year over year in the quarter.

Overall in the fourth quarter, EMC gained market share, garnering 31.7 percent versus 29.1 percent in the year earlier quarter. IBM had a small statistical gain, but the other vendors " Veritas, Computer Associates, and Hewlett-Packard -- each lost small market share percentages.