Storage Market to Reach $17 Billion By 2005

According to Gartner Dataquest, the worldwide storage management software market is forecast to grow from $5.3 billion in 2000 to $16.7 billion in 2005. This year alone, the storage market is expected to grow 26.4 percent in 2001, to $6.6 billion.

“SANs, intelligent storage appliances and new data replication techniques will transform the way storage backup and recovery is accomplished over the next three years,” said Carolyn DiCenzo, chief analyst for Gartner Dataquest’s Storage Management Software and SAN Appliances research group. “The resulting storage management environment will demand consistent, integrated and automated tools. Hardware and software vendors must quickly, and consistently, implement the management standards defined and provide application program interfaces that take that work a step further.”

The Gartner Dataquest Perspective, “Storage Software Will Continue to See High Growth Through 2005, ” says that in 2001, the storage infrastructure segment will be the largest segment, accounting for 41 percent of the market. Data management will be close behind with 40 percent of the market. By 2005, the gap will widen to 43 percent for storage infrastructure and 34 percent for data management.

“Data Replication products have been driving the growth in the storage infrastructure segment,” said DiCenzo. “But starting in 2001, virtualization software will further enhance that growth as new vendors enter the market to support storage resource optimization via pooling of disk storage in SANs.”