FRAMINGHAM, USA: According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, the worldwide storage software market experienced another decline in year-over-year growth in the third quarter of 2009 (3Q09) with revenues of $2.87 billion, representing –7.9 percent growth over the same quarter one year ago, but a 1.2 percent growth from the previous quarter (2Q09).

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Michael Margossian, research analyst, Storage Software, IDC, said: "The storage software market was barely able to maintain a positive sequential growth rate in the third quarter of 2009. For the second quarter in a row, only two of the top five vendors displayed a positive growth over the previous quarter. EMC and IBM displayed positive growth rates of 5.7 percent, and 6.9 percent respectively, while Symantec, NetApp, and CA each had negative growth rates from the previous quarter of –2.1 percent, –8.9 percent, and –three percent respectively."

"In the third quarter we saw EMC regain the top spot in the replication market, with 10.7 percent growth over 2Q09, while NetApp declined 10.1 percent. Last quarter NetApp made a big push for their fiscal year end, which for the first time made them the market leader, but NetApp has fallen back to second position with 29.5 percent market share, where EMC has a 32.5 percent share," added Margossian.

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"Two out of the top three vendors in the data protection and recovery market grew sequentially (IBM and EMC) while the leader Symantec declined at 1.2 percent. Symantec is still the market leader with 31.1 percent market share, and IBM and EMC having 14.1 percent and 12.8 percent market share respectively."

EMC led the overall market with 23.4 percent revenue share in the third quarter of 2009. Symantec held onto the second position with 17.8 percent revenue share, while IBM finished in the third position with 12.2 percent revenue share. NetApp finished in the fourth position with 7.6 percent revenue share while CA rounded out the top five with 3.9 revenue share.

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide Storage Software Revenue, Third Quarter of 2009 (Revenues are in Millions)

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, December 2009.

Notes: Starting in Q2 2007, IBM is reported as the combined entity of IBM and Softek.