Archiving, data recovery sparks storage market growth.
The thing to remember about all of the archiving and data protections that's exponentially increased as businesses have gone digital is that it creates a very nice business for companies in the storage management game. According to today's release of IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, the storage software market in the third quarter of 2008 saw revenues of $3.1 billion, an 11 percent jump over the same quarter a year ago.
EMC led the pack with nearly 25 percent revenue share while Symantec finished second with nearly 18 percent. IBM followed, as did NetApp, HP and CA. The report said the growth was down slightly compared against the second quarter partially because of the overall economy. Said James Baker, research manager of Storage Software for IDC:
Archiving, File Systems, Data Protection and Recovery, and Storage Management showed the best year-over-year performance. Archiving growth can be attributed to widespread compliance and active archiving projects. File Systems are showing strength as virtualization spreads to the storage arena. Data Protection and Recovery is growing because users are aware of dire consequences to the firm if their data is not available when it is needed. And Storage Management is moving ahead as more data is put under management and improved storage efficiencies are being achieved with thin provisioning and as various Green IT projects come on line.
