Organisations in Europe will spend just under €4 billion (£2.68 billion) on storage software in 2004, a recent report by analyst group Macarthur Stroud predicts. And that amount is set to grow over the next three years at a compound annual rate of 26%, hitting around €7 billion in 2007.

Hamish Macarthur, CEO and founder of Macarthur Stroud, says “the storage market is still one of the healthiest IT segments at the moment and the fierce competition between the vendors is evidence of that.”

He adds: “End users are in a very good position right now because there is a solution to fit every organisation and every budget.”

Related markets will see a positive knock-on effect, says the report. With the need to consolidate resources and deliver more resilient infrastructures and secure information management practices, the growth in storage software will also favour the prospects of storage service providers.

The market for data protection will also grow steadily. Macarthur Stroud believes that disaster recovery strategies are becoming an increasing priority for organisations and, as such, the demand will increase for architectures that support both high-performance back-up and recovery strategies and continuous business operations.