Storage on the Upswing

A recent IDC research has revealed a 48% surge in storage software across the

Asia-Pacific region in the past year, with the potential for the APAC market to

triple over the next five years.

"The recent boom we have seen in the region is far from over," says

Grace Lai, Market Analyst, Software Research, IDC Asia/Pacific adding that

storage software is top of mind. She explained that it has gained enough

attention from both business and IT perspectives and that companies will

continue to dedicate resources to fund the improvement of their storage

investments.

However,

the findings of the latest IDC report, ‘Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) Storage

Software Market Analysis and Forecast, 2001 — 2006’, do not cite the

interest in backup and archive software as the key driver of this trend. Though

the market for backup and archive software grew 32% year-on-year from 2000 to

2001, its share of storage software spending dropped from 43% of the total

market to 38%. Instead, storage replication software and storage resource

management were the growth leaders and they formed approximately half the

spending on storage software in 2001. IDC expects these markets to grow at a

CAGR of approximately 25% over the next five years.

Whilst the pattern of growth is anticipated to be uneven amongst countries in

the Asia/Pacific region, there will be a rapid game of ‘catch-up’ played in

key markets such as Greater China and Korea. Storage systems are increasingly

becoming as essential as telephone systems to businesses. IDC anticipates that

the market interest over the next five years will build and lean towards more

complex and strategic solutions such as storage resource management.

Furthermore, APAC doesn’t have a significant population of large firms.

"Hence, the need for massive data collections and the management tools it

necessitates are noticeably lower in the region," adds Lai.

EMC again topped the overall storage software market, almost doubling its

revenue base between 2000 and 2001, to reach a market share of 33%. Veritas and

Computer Associates followed behind in close succession, with market shares of

15% and 10% respectively. Strong growth rates were recorded by Veritas (56%) and

Legato (55%), as well as StorageTek (61%) and Sun Microsystems (67%), albeit

from a smaller revenue base. Looking forward, the competition in the market will

become more intense, particularly from these two players, who have both cited

storage software as a key focus area from 2002 onwards.

In the Singapore storage software market, Veritas topped the list in 2001,

with a marketshare of 23%, closely followed by EMC and Computer Associates.

Singapore has seen a significant increase in demand for back up and archive

functionality, which remains the largest focus of storage investment in 2001.

However, interest is slowly turning towards the more ‘utility’ oriented

tools. The use of these practical tools, whose functionality includes disk

optimization, defragmentation and compression, lays the foundation for a more

strategic approach expressed through storage resource management software

investment, which grew at 61% from 2000 to 2001.

TEAM DQ in New Delhi