This IDC study provides a forecast of the worldwide archival storage solutions market through 2016. This study provides a forecast of revenue associated with archiving software and revenue/capacity forecasts for disk storage systems that are part of active archive and long-term data preservation archive solutions.

Compliance with government regulations and the need to manage large amounts of information in a cost-effective manner remain major drivers for investment in archiving solutions. However, IDC expects cloud service providers to embark on major object-based storage buildouts for archival storage as part of their customer capture, retention, and Big Data analytic efforts.

"By the start of 2012, growing interest in and use of large data sets for rapid analytics/Big Data raised the visibility of data archiving as a critical IT requirement. Businesses and cloud service providers are making investments in technologies that allow them to make better use of existing structured and unstructured information within a content-indexed archive to generate greater business value," says Richard Villars, vice president, Information & Cloud.