Storage Software Market Numbers Improve Slightly in Q3, IDC Reports

IT researcher IDC reported Dec. 7 that the worldwide storage software market basically mirrored the storage hardware market by enduring another decline in year-over-year growth in the third quarter but showing sequential improvement over the second quarter.
IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker reported global revenues of $2.87 billion, down 8 percent over the same quarter one year ago, but up a slight 1.2 percent from the previous three-month period.
EMC, which led the external disk hardware market in the third quarter by a 2-to-1 ratio over No. 2 IBM, also led the overall storage software market with 23.4 percent revenue share in the same period.
Symantec, with its Veritas storage software brand, claimed second position with 17.8 percent revenue share, and IBM came in third with 12.2 percent.
NetApp was fourth with 7.6 percent revenue share, and CA was fifth with 3.9 percent. Hewlett-Packard was right behind in sixth place at 3.8 percent.
Symantec was way out in front, as it has been for years, in the data protection market space, with $298 million in revenue and 31 percent market share. IBM was a distant second with $135 million and 14 percent; EMC was third with $128 million and 12.8 percent of the market.
“For the second quarter in a row, only two of the top five vendors displayed a positive growth over the previous quarter,” said IDC research analyst Michael Margossian. “EMC and IBM displayed positive growth rates of 5.7 percent and 6.9 percent respectively, while Symantec, NetApp and CA … had negative growth rates from the previous quarter of -2.1 percent, -8.9 percent and -3 percent respectively.”