Among Storage Software Top 5, Only Symantec Depressed

According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, the worldwide storage software market experienced solid growth in 1Q10 with revenues of $3.0 billion, representing 7.2% growth over the same quarter one year ago, but a 1.6% decrease from the previous quarter (4Q09).

"The gains in the storage software market in the first quarter of the year were the result of overall growth from many of the leading vendors as well as the weak performance in 1Q09 due to economic conditions during that period," said Laura DuBois, program vice president, Storage Software at IDC. "However, market demand for storage solutions has clearly returned, with five of the top six vendors showing positive growth year over year. Another quarter of growth will be a strong indicator that the storage software market is in recovery."

Much of the overall growth came from the market’s largest suppliers: EMC (up 13.7%), IBM (up 11.0%), HP (up 8.7%), NetApp (up 8.1%), and CA (up 7.2%). Not to be overlooked, however, was the 25% year-over-year growth coming from CommVault’s performance.

Much of the overall growth was due to the release of storage spending following budget freezes in 2009. Expenditures and projects that were postponed or cancelled in late 2008 and 2009 resulted in a backlog of projects that are starting to be switched on again.

The storage software revenue growth of 7.2% is in line with worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues, which posted a year-over-year growth of 17.1%, totaling $5.0 billion, in the first quarter of 2010.

Data protection and recovery, the most material of all the storage software segments, was up 10.6% from a year ago. EMC, CommVault, IBM, and HP all enjoyed double digit year-over-year growth in this segment. EMC and CommVault had the strongest year-over-year growth with revenues up 46.6% and 24.9% respectively for data protection and recovery.

  Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide Storage Software Revenue
                          First Quarter of 2010
                        (Revenues are in Millions)

(Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, June 2010)

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