History 2001: Storage Software Market to Hit $10.7 Billion in 2005

IDC projects WW storage software market revenues to increase at a CAGR of 14.4%, from $5.47 billion in 2000 to $10.7 billion in 2005. This represents a 96% increase in revenue during the forecast period.

“The quick acceptance and adoption rate of storage software solutions during 2000 can certainly be expected to continue at an accelerated pace over the next five years,” said Bill North, research director of IDC’s storage software service. “Enterprises will continue to demand more sophisticated software tools to assist in efficient management while corporations will strive for 100% application uptime and data availability. These will both continue to be key factors in market growth.”

According to the report, the following factors will also contribute to the heightened need for overall storage software solutions:

• increasing use of digital forms of information caused by e-commerce application deployment;
• growing awareness of the need to protect corporate information resid?ing on client desktops and mobile laptops;
• a shortage of IT staff trained in SAN management and high availability system, application, and storage management.

Of the 4 storage software submarkets backup and archive, including HSM, SRM, storage replication, and other storage software such as storage utilities backup and archive software is the largest.

Revenue in this segment is expected to increase at a CAGR of 11.8% over the next 5 years.

The fastest growing segment, which is SRM software, is expected to reach $2.7 billion in 2005 from a previous $1.1 billion in 2000. This represents a 19.5% CAGR over the forecast period.

IDC believes although the backup and archive software market is a mature market, it will continue to have significant innovation. Growth will come from upgrades and enhancements to existing technology rather than from increased market penetration.

The SRM market is the most dynamic, with the driving factor being the increased deployment of SANs. Growth in this market is attributed to the adoption of more sophisticated resource management tools designed with storage networking in mind.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 165 on October 2001 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.