Compliance underpins storage software growth
Compliance underpins storage software growth
Mar 16, 2005: Increasing awareness of – and affirmative action by – IT managers over regulatory compliance requirements is driving significant growth in the worldwide storage software market.
For the full year 2004, storage software revenue grew 16.1 percent year over year to US$7.9 billion (AU$10 billion), according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker. In the most recent quarter, the worldwide storage software market grew 15 percent year-over-year to US$2.2 billion (AU$2.8 billion) in the fourth quarter of 2004.
“The storage software market ended on a very positive note, continuing its momentum of double-digit growth. This pattern is fuelled by the increased business investment in data protection and management, as well as a greater awareness of compliance requirements," said Bill North, research director for Storage Software at IDC.
The fourth quarter of 2004, also saw the storage resource management market post the largest gain at 19.7 percent year-over-year growth, while the back-up and archive software market continued to represent the largest functional market, growing 9.5 percent year-over-year. The storage replication software and file system software markets also enjoyed strong results in the fourth quarter with 17.2 percent and 14.2 percent 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," added North. "As traditional point-in-time backup 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.”
The overall market for the quarter saw EMC (the combined results of EMC and Legato) hold the lead with 31.7 percent revenue share, gaining the greatest year-over-year market share among the top 5 vendors. Veritas maintained its second position with 21.7 percent revenue share, growing 11.4 percent year-over-year. Computer Associates, IBM and HP rounded out the top five, with 8.8 percent, 8.2 percent and 6.6 percent revenue share respectively.
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