IDC Says Storage Software Sales Keep Booming

Published: October 4, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you wonder sometimes why the major disk array makers stay in that cut-throat hardware market, all you need to do is look at the portfolio of expensive and profitable storage software that they sell as part of their arrays or as part of the servers that their arrays store data for.

According to recent statistics compiled by IDC, during the second quarter of 2007, storage software sales rose for the 15th consecutive quarter, going up by 10.4 percent to hit $2.8 billion.

IBM had the fastest growth in the storage software market in the quarter, rising by 19 percent to $362 million, driven in part by its acquisition of Softek. But EMC remained in the top spot in this market, with $685 million in sales in Q2. However, EMC grew at under half the rate of the market at large, rising only by 4.8 percent compared to the second quarter of 2008. It will be a long time before anyone catches EMC in the storage software space, however, since Symantec, by virtue of its acquisition of Veritas, posted only $488 million in sales, up 7.1 percent and also showing slower growth than the market at large. Network Appliance is pulling up the class average in terms of growth, rising by 34.2 percent to $298 million, followed by Hewlett-Packard at number five, which saw sales drop by 1.9 percent in the quarter to $130 million. CA was neck-and-neck with HP in the storage software space, up 5.1 percent to $129 million. Other vendors in this space accounted for $688 million, up 9.8 percent.

"Customer demand for products that manage and protect information more efficiently and cost effectively continue to drive the need for storage software," said Rhoda Phillips, research manager for storage software at IDC, who put together the market stats. "In particular, businesses are faced with increased regulatory compliance, litigation, and e-discovery requirements as demonstrated by the fast-growing archive and hierarchical storage management (HSM) market, which posted a 14.9 percent year-over-year growth. Buyers are also interested in products that reduce risk, ensure data availability, and simplify complex IT infrastructures, all key business factors that will sustain the momentum in the storage software market."

IDC counts file systems, replication software, data recovery and archiving, storage management, hierarchical storage, and device management software in this general storage software category.

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