According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, the worldwide storage software market experienced continued gains in the second quarter of 2010 (2Q10) with revenues of nearly $3.0 billion, representing 3.3% growth over the same quarter one year ago, but a 2.3% decrease from the previous quarter (1Q10).

"The gains in the storage software market in the second quarter were largely the result of overall growth from some of the large suppliers. The growth for the quarter came from EMC (up 13.3% year over year), IBM (up 10.6%), and NetApp (up 6.0%)," said Laura DuBois, program vice president, Storage Software at IDC. "From a segment perspective, growth is coming from spending in four segments of storage software: data protection and recovery (up 4.9% year over year), archiving (up 8.2%), storage management (up 5.8%), and storage infrastructure (up 12.7%)."

The storage software revenue growth of 3.3% is in line with worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues, which posted year-over-year growth of 20.4%, totaling $5.0 billion in the second quarter of 2010.

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide Storage Software Revenue, Second Quarter of 2010 (Revenues are in Millions)

Vendor	2Q10 Revenue	2Q10 Market Share	2Q09 Revenue	2Q09 Market Share	2Q10/2Q09 Revenue Growth
1. EMC	$722	24.4%	$638	22.3%	13.3%
2. Symantec	$488	16.5%	$524	18.3%	-6.9%
3. IBM	$410	13.9%	$371	13.0%	10.6%
4. NetApp	$256	8.7%	$241	8.4%	6.0%
5. CA	$108	3.6%	$106	3.7%	2.0%
4. Hewlett-Packard	$97	3.3%	$108	3.8%	-10.3%
All Vendors	$2,955	100%	$2,860	100%	3.3%

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker, Sept 2010.

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