3Q09 WW Storage Software Market Declined 7% From 3Q08

According to IDC‘s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, the worldwide storage software market experienced another decline in year-over-year growth in the third quarter of 2009 (3Q09) with revenues of $2.87 billion, representing –7.9% growth over the same quarter one year ago, but a 1.2% growth from the previous quarter (2Q09).

"The storage software market was barely able to maintain a positive sequential growth rate in the third quarter of 2009," said Michael Margossian, research analyst, Storage Software at IDC. "For the second quarter in a row, only two of the top 5 vendors displayed a positive growth over the previous quarter. EMC and IBM displayed positive growth rates of 5.7%, and 6.9% respectively, while Symantec, NetApp, and CA each had negative growth rates from the previous quarter of –2.1%, –8.9%, and –3% respectively."

"In the third quarter we saw EMC regain the top spot in the replication market, with 10.7% growth over 2Q09, while NetApp declined 10.1%. Last quarter NetApp made a big push for their fiscal year end, which for the first time made them the market leader, but NetApp has fallen back to second position with 29.5% market share, where EMC has a 32.5% share," added Margossian. "Two out of the top three vendors in the data protection and recovery market grew sequentially (IBM and EMC) while the leader Symantec declined at 1.2%. Symantec is still the market leader with 31.1% market share, and IBM and EMC having 14.1% and 12.8% market share respectively."

EMC led the overall market with 23.4% revenue share in the third quarter of 2009. Symantec held onto the second position with 17.8% revenue share, while IBM finished in the third position with 12.2% revenue share. NetApp finished in the fourth position with 7.6% revenue share while CA rounded out the top 5 with 3.9 revenue share.

 
Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide Storage Software Revenue,
 
Third Quarter of 2009
 
(Revenues are in Millions)

(Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, December 2009)

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, archiving (including email archiving), storage replication, storage management, storage device management, storage infrastructure, file system, and ‘other’.