Global storage software industry continued to grow, though slowly, during Q4 2008 mainly due to the positive growth posted by low-end and mid-range storage segments.
IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker has revealed that Q4 2008 was the 21st successive quarter of YOY growth for the global storage software market, with revenue reaching $3.03 Billion, 3.6% up as compared to Q4 2007.
With a share of 26% in the total revenue, EMC emerged as the market leader in Q4 2008. Symantec and IBM stood second and third respectively with corresponding revenue shares of 18.3% and 13.2%. NetApp occupied the fourth spot by virtue of 7.5% revenue share. On the other side, HP and CA, accounting for 4.5% and 3.7% revenue share respectively, rounded out the top five.
The global economic slowdown made the Q4 2008 tough for the disk storage systems market due to which the market displayed slow growth as compared to the same quarter in 2007. High-end storage systems market was negatively impacted by low end-user expenditure and relatively long purchasing cycles. However, some mid-range and low-end storage segments posted positive growth as end users extended their search for storage solutions in these low-cost storage segments to fulfill their storage requirements while optimizing their investments in storage infrastructure.
It is noteworthy that IDC categorizes the storage hardware market into two main segments. First one is the external disk storage system segment that includes storage systems sold independent of a server, while the second one is the total disk storage segment that includes disk storage sold as part of a server.
In Q4 2008, there was a big blow from the internal storage (storage within servers) that is directly linked to the server sales. External disk storage system capacity increased but remained low in comparison to the corresponding quarters in the past.
According to a Research Analyst at RNCOS, “The impact of global recession is clearly reflected from the slow growth in sales of storage software systems. However, network storage maintained its steady growth in the final quarter of 2008, but end users are seeking more economical ways to fulfill their increasing storage needs in view of contracting IT budgets in the current economic scenario.”
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