13 Not an Unlucky Number for Storage Software Market

March 13, 2007: According to its latest batch of research from Q4 2006, IDC says that the worldwide storage software market has grown for the 13th straight quarter, nabbing revenues of US$2.6 billion.

This marks a 3.1 percent increase on the year before, and amounted to a total of US$9.8 billion for the entire year – a growth of 8.3 percent year-over-year. According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, storage replication was again a major factor driving the sector's growth.

"Storage software continues to show good year-over-year performance, fueled by growth in the archiving, replication and file system software markets as well as an increase in demand for storage management software," said Laura DuBois, research director for Storage Software at IDC. "Over the last 18 months, we have seen firms adopt solutions that can improve availability, recovery and information access across heterogeneous environments, which has contributed to the growth in storage software."

The company also found that storage replication showed a year-over-year growth of 14.4 percent in Q4 of 2006, while the rapidly-growing Archive and HSM (Hierarchical Storage Management) market posted a 25.5 percent year-over-year growth rate.

EMC was top dog in the overall market this quarter with a 27.9 percent share of revenue, while Symantec took the second place with 18 percent, while IBM rounded out the top three with 12.1 percent.

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