Worldwide storage software mkt maintains double-digit growth in Q1, 05

FRAMINGHAM:

According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, the worldwide

storage software market grew 14.9% year over year to $2.1 billion in the first

quarter of 2005. This is the sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit

year-over-year growth.

“Continued customer spending on software for data

protection, storage resource management, and compliance, has helped to drive

this positive start to 2005,” said Rhoda Phillips, research manager for IDC

Storage Software. “Spending growth related to data protection, including

replication, backup, and archive software, is an indicator of customers'

continued concerns about application availability, data management, and

business continuity”, she added.

In the first quarter of 2005, the storage resource

management and the back-up and archive software markets continued to represent

the two largest storage software markets, each representing a third of the

market. The storage replication software market also enjoyed strong results in

the first quarter with 19.7% year-over-year growth. The file systems software

market grew 25.4% year over year.

EMC led the overall market with 30.0% revenue share in the

first quarter of 2005. VERITAS maintained its second position with 21.4%

revenue share, growing 11.4% year over year. IBM finished in the third position

with 8.6% revenue share. Network Appliance and HP rounded out the top 5 in a

statistical tie with 6.7% and 6.6% revenue share, respectively. Network

Appliance and EMC posted the strongest results among the top 5 vendors, with

61.1% and 17.9% year-over-year growth, respectively.

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide Storage Software Revenue,

Q1 2005

(Revenues are in Millions)

Source:IDC