Storage software sales shoot skywards

The worldwide storage software market surged 15 per cent year-over-year to $2.2bn in the fourth quarter of 2004, breaking all previous records, research has found.

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker for the full year 2004 said that storage software revenue grew 16.1 per cent year-over-year to $7.9bn, injecting more than a billion dollars of revenue into the marketplace.

"The storage software market ended on a very positive note, continuing its momentum of double-digit growth," said Bill North, research director for storage software at IDC.

"This pattern is fuelled by the increased business investment in data protection and management, as well as a greater awareness of compliance requirements."

The analyst firm's latest report found that, in the fourth quarter of 2004, the storage resource management market posted the largest gain at 19.7 per cent year-over-year growth, while the back-up and archive software market continued to represent the largest functional market, growing 9.5 per cent year over year.

The storage replication software and file system software markets also enjoyed strong results in the fourth quarter, with 17.2 per cent and 14.2 per cent year-over-year growth respectively.

"The strong growth rate for storage resource management is a result of the need to manage the increasing scale and complexity of storage systems as well as the heterogeneous storage environment," said North.

"As traditional point-in-time back-up and storage replication move closer together, these combined markets have contributed to the market's healthy growth in 2004. IDC expects the overall market to continue in this direction over the next few years."

EMC (representing the combined results of EMC and Legato) led the overall market for the fourth quarter of 2004 with 31.7 per cent revenue share, gaining the greatest year-over-year market share among the top five vendors.

Veritas maintained its second position with 21.7 per cent revenue share, growing 11.4 per cent year-over-year. Computer Associates and IBM finished third and fourth, with 8.8 per cent and 8.2 per cent revenue share respectively. HP rounded out the top five at 6.6 per cent.

EMC and IBM posted the strongest quarterly results among the top five vendors, with 25.1 per cent and 16.7 per cent year-over-year growth respectively.