WW Storage Software Market Increased 11.6% From 3Q07 to 3Q08

IDC‘s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, the worldwide storage software market experienced its 20th consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in the third quarter of 2008 (3Q08) with revenues of $3.1 billion, an 11.6% increase over the same quarter one year ago.

"Although the storage software market declined slightly compared to the second quarter, which was partially due to the economic climate, it did enjoy solid grow year over year," said Michael Margossian, research analyst, Storage Software at IDC. "All of the top vendors in the market grew year over year, while some declined from the previous quarter. Historically, the market does slow somewhat before a strong fourth quarter for many companies."

"Archiving, File Systems, Data Protection and Recovery, and Storage Management showed the best year-over-year performance," said James Baker, research manager, Storage Software for IDC. "Archiving growth can be attributed to widespread compliance and active archiving projects. File Systems are showing strength as virtualization spreads to the storage arena. Data Protection and Recovery is growing because users are aware of dire consequences to the firm if their data is not available when it is needed. And Storage Management is moving ahead as more data is put under management and improved storage efficiencies are being achieved with thin provisioning and as various Green IT projects come on line."

EMC led the overall market with 24.7% revenue share in the third quarter of 2008. Symantec took the second position with 17.8% revenue share, while IBM finished in the third position with 12.9% revenue share. NetApp finished in the fourth position with 8.5% revenue share while HP and CA rounded out the top 5 in a statistical tie with 4.3% and 4.0% revenue share, respectively.

 
Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide Storage Software Revenue,
  Third Quarter of 2008 (Revenues are in Millions)

(Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, September 2008)

Note: Starting in Q2 2007, IBM is reported as the combined entity of IBM and Softek.

Taxonomy Note: IDC has updated its storage software taxonomy to reflect changes in the market over the last several years. The storage software taxonomy includes eight functional markets: data protection and recovery, archive and hierarchical storage management (HSM) (including email archiving), storage replication, storage management, storage device management, storage infrastructure, file system, and ‘other’.