History 2005: WW Storage Software Market Surpassed $1.9 Billion in Quarterly Revenue for First Time in 3Q04

According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, the WW  storage software market surpassed $1.9 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time in 3Q04, growing at robust pace of 19.1 % year over year. 

“Spending for storage software reached a record high during the third quarter as the market continued its sustained double-digit growth pattern,” said Bill North,  director of storage software research, IDC. “Storage capacity requirements and complexity continue to grow while system costs steadily  decline. This quarter, customer investment in storage software  grew to nearly $36 for every $100 spent on storage systems. This is indicative of the increasing value customers are placing on the software that allows them to effectively manage and protect business information assets.” 

Continuing the momentum from last quarter, all of the major storage software functional markets posted double-digit revenue growth in 3Q04 when compared to 2003. The storage resource management market posted the largest gain at 27.3% Y/Y growth while the back-up and archive software market continued to represent the largest functional market, growing 17.4% Y/Y. The storage replication software and file system software markets also enjoyed strong results with 13.7% and 10.3% Y/Y, respectively.

EMC (combined with Legato) led the overall market in 3Q04 with 31.8% revenue share, gaining the most market share among the top 5 vendor over 3Q03. Veritas maintained its 2nd position with 21.7% revenue share, growing 12.7% Y/Y. Computer Associates edged out HP and IBM for the 3rd position with 8.8% revenue share. HP and IBM finished in a statistical tie for the 4th position with 7.6% and 7.1 % revenue share, respectively. HP and CA posted the strongest results among the top 5 vendors,  with 30.2% and 29.1 % Y/Y  growth, respectively.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 205 on January 2005 from the former paper version of Computer Data  Storage Newsletter.