STORAGE

The worldwide storage software market experienced its 13th consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter of 2006 with revenues of $2.6 billion, a 3.1% increase over the same quarter one year ago. For the full year 2006, storage software revenues totaled $9.8 billion, growing 8.3% year over year. According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, storage replication was once again a major factor driving the sector's growth. "Storage software continues to show good year-over-year performance, fueled by growth in the archiving, replication and file system software markets as well as an increase in demand for storage management software," said Laura DuBois, research director for Storage Software at IDC. "Over the last 18 months, we have seen firms adopt solutions that can improve availability, recovery and information access across heterogeneous environments, which has contributed to the growth in storage software." Storage replication, one of the largest storage software markets, demonstrated year-over-year growth of 14.4% in 4Q06. Meanwhile, the smaller but fast-growing Archive and HSM (Hierarchical Storage Management) market posted a 25.5% year-over-year growth rate. EMC led the overall market this quarter with 27.9% revenue share in the fourth quarter of 2006. Symantec took the second position with 18% revenue share, while IBM finished in the third position with 12.1% revenue share. Network Appliance finished in the fourth position with 9.6% revenue share. Again, CA and HP rounded out the top 5 in a statistical tie with 5.0% and 5.4% revenue share, respectively.