Driven by a trend amongst corporates investing heavily to secure, manage and protect their digital assets, the worldwide storage software market grew 17.7pc in the fourth quarter of 2003 to reach US$1.78bn. For the full year 2003, IDC reported that the storage software market grew 8pc overall, with the injection of almost half a billion dollars in additional revenues into the market.
IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker reported that within the overall market all of the major storage software segments posted double-digit revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2003. The back-up and archive market grew 17.6pc year-over-year while the storage replication software and the storage resource management markets grew 14.7pc and 16.2pc year-over-year, respectively.
For the full year, the storage resource management market posted the strongest revenue growth of 11.3pc, followed by the storage replication software market with 9.5pc annual growth.
EMC (the combined results of EMC and Legato) led the overall market this quarter with 31.7pc revenue share, gaining 2 points of revenue share when compared with the fourth quarter of 2002. Veritas maintained its second position with 21.9pc revenue share. Computer Associates edged out the competitors for the third position, followed closely by HP and IBM, which were tied for the fourth position.
Among the top 5 vendors, HP posted the largest year-over-year percentage growth in the fourth quarter with 28pc growth. EMC and Veritas also grew faster than the overall storage software market at 25.7pc and 21.3pc growth, respectively.
“Information is critical to the operation of every organisation,” said John McArthur, group vice president of Storage Research at IDC. “As we begin to move away from the most recent downturn, the storage software market is enjoying the positive effects of data centres, which are investing heavily to secure, manage, and protect their digital assets.”
“Storage software spending accelerated during the fourth quarter,” said Bill North, research director for storage software research at IDC. “The storage resource management market benefited from the wider adoption of more integrated software to manage complex networked storage environments, while the backup and replication markets were propelled by a combination of increased storage hardware spending and the need to support disaster recovery and regulatory compliance initiatives. IDC expects this growth to continue in 2004, with additional impetus from data lifecycle management solutions that help customers optimise the use of their storage assets and personnel.”
By John Kennedy
