Fuelled by strong sales of storage resource management products, the worldwide storage management software market is poised for another year of double-digit growth in 2005, according to industry analyst firm Gartner.
Ever since a dip in 2002 – a knock-on effect of the depressed economy and over-capacity – the storage software market has experienced steady rebound. Indeed, in 2005, new licence revenue is predicted to jump 12% over 2004 figures to reach $6.3 billion.
Vendors in the sector will increasingly try to leverage customer efforts to store and manage their data in order to satisfy compliance demands, in particular the pressure for archiving and data protection.
In 2004, EMC, Veritas, IBM and Computer Associates remained the top four vendors based on new licence storage software revenue. And Network Appliance showed the strongest growth of the top ten, as it pushed up two places to grab the number five slot.
During the year, demand for storage resource management – products that monitor and manage capacity and performance across multiple storage and server platforms – rose sharply. At $612 million, sales in 2004 were up 30.8% over the previous year. That may only account for 11% of the total storage software market but, according to Gartner analyst Carolyn DiCrenzo, "It is expected to continue to record fast growth as enterprises look to better mange their storage utilisation and begin to automate some of the management functions."
