FRAMINGHAM, Mass., June 8, 2009 – According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, the worldwide storage software market experienced its first decline in 21 consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth in the first quarter of 2009 (1Q09) with revenues of $2.8 billion, representing –5.2% growth over the same quarter one year ago.

"The storage software market had its first year-over-year decline in more than five years," said Michael Margossian, research analyst, Storage Software at IDC. "The combination of the normally slow first quarter for most companies with the continued economic climate was displayed in this quarter's results. A majority of companies displayed either negative or very low year-over-year growth."

"On a yearly basis, a majority of the sub-markets declined from the previous year's first quarter. Predominantly affected were the Device Management, Replication, and Infrastructure markets, all segments closely aligned with the storage systems themselves. File System and Management software were able to grow amidst the current economic climate," added Laura DuBois , IDC's research director for Storage Software. "The overall Storage Software market was pulled down by the underperforming large companies that make up a bulk of the sub-markets, once they start to recover, they will bring the entire market up with them."

EMC led the overall market with 21.8% revenue share in the first quarter of 2009. Symantec held onto the second position with 18.9% revenue share, while IBM finished in the third position with 12.2% revenue share. NetApp finished in the fourth position with 8.3% revenue share while CA and HP rounded out the top 5 with 4.3% and 3.5% revenue share, respectively.

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide Storage Software Revenue, First Quarter of 2009

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, June 2009.

Notes: Starting in Q2 2007, IBM is reported as the combined entity of IBM and Softek.

Taxonomy Note: IDC has updated its storage software taxonomy to reflect changes in the market over the last several years. The storage software taxonomy includes eight functional markets: data protection and recovery, archiving (including email archiving), storage replication, storage management, storage device management, storage infrastructure, file system, and "other".

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker is a quantitative tool for analyzing the global storage software market. This Tracker counts new license and maintenance revenues quarterly and provides data segmentations by vendor, submarket, functional product family, and region.

For more information about IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, please contact Hoang Nguyen at 508-935-4718 or hnguyen@idc.com.

Contact