STORAGE

BOSTON, MA -- Today Aberdeen Group, a leading market analysis and positioning services firm, announces the storage spending will reach $21.2 billion by 2005. "Worldwide Storage Management: Forecast and Analysis 2002 - 2005", an Aberdeen research report, examines storage management spending by geographic regions and storage management sub-segments, including data placement, data protection, storage resource management, and storage administration. Also incorporated in this report is an overview of storage management technology and functionality, as well as market dynamics and the latest trends in the storage management industry. "Sparked by three IS imperatives - reining in the costs of managing storage, fulfilling IS' fiduciary responsibility for protecting the information assets of the enterprise, and squeezing out more productivity with fewer budget dollars - the storage management software market will experience more rapid growth over the next several years than might have been anticipated even six months ago," says David Hill, Aberdeen Research Director, Storage and Storage Management. "When the going gets rough, IS turns to administrative software to provide the intelligence that helps it manage data more efficiently and effectively -- and nowhere is that more true than in the storage management software market." Aberdeen research shows that all four categories of storage management software -- data protection (such as backup and restore software), data placement (such as virtualization software), storage resource management (such as quota and asset management), and storage administration (such as storage network management) --will grow rapidly to support the new IS requirements; however, growth rates will not be uniform. For more information about Worldwide Storage Management: Forecast and Analysis 2002 - 2005, visit www.aberdeen.com/ab_company/hottopics/worldwidestorage/default.htm