The worldwide storage software market generated sales of $2.9bn in the first quarter of 2008, analysts reported today.

IDC said that the figures mark the 18th consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth, and represent a 9.4 per cent increase over the same quarter a year ago.

"Overall market growth was 9.4 per cent year-over-year driven primarily by the data protection, recovery and storage replication markets," said Michael Margossian, research analyst for storage software at IDC.

"Three out of the top five vendors in the data protection and recovery software market posted double-digit growth rates, and in the storage replication software market the top four suppliers posted double-digit growth rates."

IDC explained that the first quarter of the calendar year can be slow for some vendors, but that the market showed relatively strong growth from a year ago.

Laura DuBois, programme director for storage software at IDC, added: "The storage software market continues to see solid growth with firms investing in software to help facilitate management, access to and protection, retention and recovery of increasing volumes of storage capacity.

"Leading indicators for continued growth in the storage software market include compressing recovery times, tighter SLAs, the need to improve resource utilisation, and ongoing regulatory and discovery pressures.

"While meeting these escalating business needs, firms need to manage increasing storage capacities while reducing data centre space, power and cooling requirements."

EMC led the overall market with 24.9 per cent revenue share in the first quarter of 2008. Symantec took the second position with 17.9 per cent, while IBM finished third with 12.8 per cent.

NetApp finished fourth with 8.5 per cent, while HP and CA rounded out the top five in a statistical tie with 4.4 per cent each.