The storage software market value approached $3.4bn during the second quarter of 2011, up 11.3% over the same quarter prior year, according to International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Storage Software QView.
Increased investments within the server and disk storage systems markets during the same quarter have driven this double digit growth, the IDC report said.
Five of the seven functional markets covered within the report grew at double-digit or high single-digit rates during the quarter.
Storage infrastructure software and storage & device management software experienced the strongest gains with 22.6% and 17.3% year-over-year growth, respectively.
Data protection and recovery software sales accounted for 34.2% of market value and were the largest contributor to incremental revenue for the quarter compared to one year ago.
EMC, Symantec, and IBM were the top ranking storage software suppliers with 24.5%, 15.8% and 14.1% market shares, respectively.
IDC Storage Software programme senior research analyst Marshall Amaldas said new product introductions, simplified pricing & bundling, ongoing modernisation of data protection processes, a need to improve management of storage within virtual environments, and desire to mitigate against legal and IT risks were all important contributors to growth.
"The fact that all of this is occurring during times of elevated economic uncertainty makes the market growth even more impressive," Amaldas said.
