Storage software market begins recovery
IDC claims market is showing signs of returning to buoyancy, despite sales slip in Q2
Green shoots: IDC claims the storage software market is "slowly starting to recover"
The global storage software market started to show signs of recovery in 2009's second quarter, despite a year-on-year decline of almost 10 per cent, research has claimed.
Research house IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker finds worldwide sales in the three months to the end of June slipped 9.8 per cent to $2.8bn (£1.7bn).
Noemi Greyzdorf, storage software research analyst for IDC, claimed the sequential growth shown by the market in Q2 suggested a return to normality. She added that the data protection and recovery market jumped three per cent on Q1, with leading vendors Symantec, IBM and EMC all enjoying quarterly growth.
"In the second quarter we generally start to see growth from the first quarter, and this year was no exception," said Greyzdorf. "In addition, the device management and archiving software markets each managed positive gains over the first quarter."
EMC was the world's leading manufacturer by revenue in Q2, despite sales slipping 14.4 per cent year on year to $638m. The vendor bagged a 22.4 per cent share of the market, almost four points ahead of Symantec in second.
In third place, IBM endured a tough quarter, with revenue down 18.5 per cent to $328m and market share declining by 1.3 points to 11.5 per cent. NetApp, in fourth, was the big winner, with sales up 0.8 per cent to $241m and market share increasing almost a point to 8.5 per cent.
CA rounded out the top five with revenue down an annual 14.2 per cent to $116m. The software monolith accounted for 4.1 per cent of the global market, while sales from all other manufacturers represented 31.2 per cent.
IDC storage software research analyst Michael Margossian said: "The storage software market is slowly starting to recover with positive growth over the first quarter of 2009.
"While only two out of the top five vendors experienced growth over the previous quarter, the replication market grew five per cent compared to Q1, led by NetApp, which has been refocusing its efforts and grew 20 per cent from the previous quarter. "