Storage Software Had a Rebound Quarter, IDC Reports
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IDC says the worldwide storage software market experienced solid growth in the first quarter, with revenues of $3 billion and 7.2 percent growth over the same quarter a year ago.
Following last week's upbeat
market report on storage hardware sales, IDC
came out June 7 with a similarly positive report on storage software.
In its Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, the research company said
the worldwide storage software market experienced solid growth in the first
quarter, with revenues of $3 billion, amounting to 7.2 percent growth over the
same quarter a year ago.
Sequentially, however, the revenue total was a slight (1.6 percent) decrease
from the previous quarter, IDC said.
EMC, Symantec, IBM,
Hewlett-Packard, NetApp and CA supplied most of the sales impetus. EMC,
with $696 million in first-quarter revenue and a 23 percent market share, and IBM,
with $430 million and 14.2 percent market share, showed growth in the double
digits (13.7 percent and 11 percent, respectively), while HP (up 8.7 percent),
NetApp (up 8.1 percent) and CA (up 7.2 percent) also showed well.
Symantec, which had the second-highest revenue at $528 million and second-largest
market share at 17.5%, nonetheless dropped a bit-0.5 percent-in revenue from
its year-ago income of $531 million.
Fast-rising CommVault, thanks largely to its highly successful Simpana storage
suite, reported 25 percent year-over-year growth to lead all vendors, IDC
said. CommVault reported record quarterly revenue of $73.4 million-a 31 percent
jump in growth over the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009, the company said.
Most of the overall growth was due to the release of storage spending capital
following budget freezes in 2009, IDC said,
as expenditures and projects that were postponed or canceled in late 2008 and
2009 resulted in a backlog of projects that are starting to be switched on
again.
The storage software revenue growth of 7.2 percent corresponds with worldwide
external disk storage systems factory revenues, which posted a year-over-year
growth of 17.1 percent, totaling $5.0 billion, in the first quarter of 2010.
"The gains in the storage software market in the first quarter of the year
were the result of overall growth from many of the leading vendors as well as
the weak performance in 1Q09 due to economic conditions during that period,"
said IDC analyst Laura DuBois.
"However, market demand for storage solutions has clearly returned, with
five of the top six vendors showing positive growth year over year. Another
quarter of growth will be a strong indicator that the storage software market
is in recovery."
Chris Preimesberger was named Editor-in-Chief of Features & Analysis at eWEEK in November 2011. Previously he served eWEEK as Senior Writer, covering a range of IT sectors that include data center systems, cloud computing, storage, virtualization, green IT, e-discovery and IT governance. His blog, Storage Station, is considered a go-to information source. Chris won a national Folio Award for magazine writing in November 2011 for a cover story on Salesforce.com and CEO-founder Marc Benioff, and he has served as a judge for the SIIA Codie Awards since 2005. In previous IT journalism, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. His diverse resume also includes: sportswriter for the Los Angeles Daily News, covering NCAA and NBA basketball, television critic for the Palo Alto Times Tribune, and Sports Information Director at Stanford University. He has served as a correspondent for The Associated Press, covering Stanford and NCAA tournament basketball, since 1983. He has covered a number of major events, including the 1984 Democratic National Convention, a Presidential press conference at the White House in 1993, the Emmy Awards (three times), two Rose Bowls, the Fiesta Bowl, several NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments, a Formula One Grand Prix auto race, a heavyweight boxing championship bout (Ali vs. Spinks, 1978), and the 1985 Super Bowl. A 1975 graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., Chris has won more than a dozen regional and national awards for his work. He and his wife, Rebecca, have four children and reside in Redwood City, Calif.Follow on Twitter: editingwhiz
