Storage Software Had a Rebound Quarter, IDC Reports

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.”