Storage software finally succumbs to downturn

Market decline: Revenues totalled £1.8bn, representing a 5.2 per cent decline year on year

The worldwide storage software market has taken a tumble for the first time in more than five years, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker.

The plummet in Q109 revenue marks the first decline following 21 consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth, with revenues totalling $2.8bn (£1.8bn), representing a 5.2 per cent drop compared with the same quarter one year ago.

Michael Margossian, research analyst for storage software at IDC, said: “The storage software market had its first year-over-year decline in more than five years.

“The combination of the normally slow first quarter for most companies with the continued economic climate was displayed in this quarter's results. A majority of companies displayed either negative or very low year-over-year growth.”

Storage giant EMC led the market with 21.8 per cent revenue share in the first quarter of 2009. Symantec held onto the second position with 18.9 per cent revenue share, with IBM finishing in bronze-medal position with 12.2 per cent.

Virtualisation vendor NetApp took fourth place with 8.3 per cent revenue share, while CA and HP took fifth and sixth position, with 4.3 per cent and 3.5 per cent revenue share, respectively.

According to Laura DuBois, IDC's research director for storage software, on a yearly basis, a majority of the sub-markets declined from the previous year's first quarter.

“Predominantly affected were the device management, replication and infrastructure markets - all segments closely aligned with the storage systems themselves. File system and management software were able to grow amidst the current economic climate,” she said.

DuBois said the overall storage software market was dragged down by underperforming large companies that make up a bulk of the sub-markets.

“Once they start to recover, they will bring the entire market up with them,” she added.

John Rollason, product marketing manager at NetApp, said: “IT projects have suffered from budget freeze recently as businesses wait and see how markets recover before committing to spending, so we are not surprised at the downturn.

“The emergence of new methodologies such as cloud computing may also have contributed to the stall in spending, as IT directors take time to evaluate whether to buy or outsource areas of their storage services. In either scenario, we expect to see growth as the need to provision future data management and virtualised environments moves up the list of ‘must-do’ projects.”