Storage Software Market Keeps On Growing

EMC, Symantec, and IBM led the market, according to a report from IDC, an industry analyst firm based in Framingham, Mass.

"The market for storage software has performed very well over the past three years with the replication and archiving segments providing a lot of momentum," said Rhoda Phillips, a research manager at IDC, in a written release. "IDC expects this trend to continue as companies focus on data retention requirements and business continuity needs, as well as storage consolidation and migration issues."

Storage replication was a major driver in this growth, IDC noted in its report. Storage replication, which is one of the largest storage software markets, showed year-over-year growth of 22.5% in the third quarter of this year. The smaller market segment of archive and hierarchical storage management posted a 30.8% year-over-year growth rate.

EMC led the market in the quarter with a 28.5% share of overall revenue. Symantec was in the second spot with 17.6% share, and IBM took third place with 12.3%. Network Appliance was in the fourth spot with 9.4%, and CA and Hewlett-Packard rounded out the top five with 5.3% and 4.9% respectively, IDC reported.

Network Appliance and IBM both saw very strong year-over-year revenue growth in the third quarter. Network Appliance posted a growth of 61.1%, and IBM showed growth of 39.1%.

Hewlett-Packard didn't fare so well, showing a year-over-year revenue decline of 16.5%.