The storage software market experienced its seventh consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth during the second quarter of 2011 (2Q11), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Storage Software QView. The total market value approached $3.4 billion during the quarter, up 11.3% over the same period last year. This double-digit growth broadly aligned with increased investments made within the server and disk storage systems markets during the same quarter, an indication that storage software sales benefited from expansive investments made within the infrastructure space.

Five of the seven functional markets covered within the Worldwide Storage Software Qview grew at double-digit or high single-digit rates during the quarter. Storage Infrastructure Software and Storage & Device Management Software experienced the strongest gains with 22.6% and 17.3% year-over-year growth respectively. Data Protection and Recovery Software sales accounted for 34.2% of market value and were the largest contributor to incremental revenue for the quarter compared to one year ago.

EMC, Symantec, and IBM were the top ranking storage software suppliers with 24.5%, 15.8% and 14.1% market shares respectively. All suppliers covered within the Qview experienced year-over-year increases in storage software sales, suggesting demand for storage software was far reaching and went well beyond simple product refresh cycles.

"The far-reaching and double-digit storage software market growth was driven by quite a few factors," said Marshall Amaldas, senior research analyst with IDC's Storage Software program. "New product introductions, simplified pricing & bundling, ongoing modernization of data protection processes, a need to improve management of storage within virtual environments, and desire to mitigate against legal and IT risks were all important contributors to growth. The fact that all of this is occurring during times of elevated economic uncertainty makes the market growth even more impressive"

source: IDC