Storage Management Software Category Profile

Last year it became clear that while IBM Tivoli was the 800-pound gorilla in Storage Management Software, the gap between Big Blue and its rivals was narrowing. This year, thanks to a strong push from Hewlett-Packard and the growing maturity of Symantec's Veritas offerings, the results in this category are the closest they've been since 2002.

In fact, perennial favorite IBM Tivoli was forced to share the top overall score of 74 in the 2006 VARBusiness Annual Report Card (ARC) Storage Management Software category with rival HP. In a category where Loyalty and Product Innovation scores have traditionally made the difference, this year's race--at least where there was one (among the third-place and fifth-place finishers)--was decided by sales and marketing support, and the quality of partnership programs.

IBM and HP scored 83 out of 100 in Loyalty, 10 points above the next-place finishers, EMC and Symantec. CA lagged the five-vendor field, managing just 70 points in Loyalty, well below the field average of 76.

HP and IBM finished in a statistical tie in all of the other ARC areas. But hidden in the numbers is a clear victory--and a rousing success story--for HP, which rarely fared better than third place in this category over the past several years.

HP has traditionally held its own in Loyalty and Support but often lagged the field in Product Innovation. Boosting HP's profile among its partners this year were a number of improvements to its StorageWorks portfolio, including new tools for continuous information capture and application recovery, along with the new Reference Information Manager for files.

"HP has a unique breadth in its ability to help customers capture, manage, retain and deliver information according to its business value," says Frank Harbist, vice president and general manager of storage software at the StorageWorks division of HP. "Businesses challenged with the need to easily and cost-effectively manage ever-increasing amounts of data can use our expanded [information-lifecycle-management] portfolio to put their information to work for competitive advantage."

Still, though, HP has a long way to go to gain market share from IBM Tivoli, EMC and Symantec.

As of the second quarter of this year, EMC led the overall storage-software space with 26.4 percent of market share, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker. Symantec took the No. 2 position, with 18.9 percent, followed by IBM at 12.5 percent and Network Appliance at 9 percent. HP and CA tied, with 5.7 percent apiece. The predicted healthy growth in storage-management software indicates that next year's ARC battle could be equally pitched.

"With customers buying and installing record amounts of storage-hardware capacity, the need for storage software has never been greater," says Rhoda Phillips, research manager for IDC storage software. "Buyers are particularly interested in replication software to help ensure that their disaster-recovery and business-continuity plans are viable in planning for recovery from any unwelcome and unpredictable events that might occur."

IDC indicates that IBM grew 25 percent year-over-year in the storage-management-software segment, which was fueled by the growth of IBM's TotalStorage Productivity Center software.

Hershel Harris, vice president of the storage and security unit at IBM Tivoli, agreed that market growth is being fueled by the increasing desire for software tools "to manage data growth and improve the overall health and performance of IT infrastructures."