By Pragati Simlote

New Delhi: EMC has emerged as the leader in the worldwide storage software market with 25.4 per cent revenue share in Q1 2006. The company posted revenue of $605 million for Q1, 2006. According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, the worldwide storage software market grew 10.2 per cent year over year to $2.4 billion in the first quarter of 2006, marking 10 consecutive quarters of double-digit year-over-year growth.

Symantec took the second position with 20.1 per cent revenue share, while IBM finished in the third position with 12.6 per cent revenue share. Network Appliance, Computer Associates and HP rounded out the top 5.

"The storage software market has maintained a steady pace of growth driven by increased attention to data protection and business continuance planning," said research manager for IDC storage software Rhoda Phillips. "Businesses are concerned about their expanding information storage requirements and will continue to make investments to meet these needs," she added.

In the first quarter of 2006, the storage replication market demonstrated a 15.2 per cent year-over-year growth. In addition the smaller but fast-growing archive and HSM market posted a 30.2 per cent year-over-year growth.

For 2006, the storage software taxonomy for IDC includes eight functional markets: data protection and recovery, archive and hierarchical storage management (HSM) (including email archiving), storage replication, storage management, storage device management, storage infrastructure, file system, and "other".

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