IDC's Storage Software service identifies and analyzes the opportunities, technologies, and trends that are reshaping the storage software market and continue to drive its growth. This service provides the market intelligence necessary to help product, marketing, and strategic planning professionals create successful business strategies. Subscribers to this service receive direct access to IDC's top industry experts, who can supply competitive analysis and positioning advice, identify strategic partnering opportunities, assist with speaking to the investment community, provide press quotes, and more. Storage software has become the pivotal element in allowing customers to gain maximum benefit from their storage infrastructure. This software enables key functions, including data protection and recovery, replication, archiving, storage management, and file system management. As the scale and complexity of networked storage environments continue to grow, customers also increasingly depend on storage software to deliver "virtualized" storage capacity.

This service covers the following segments of the storage software market:

• Data protection and recovery software
• Storage replication software
• Archiving software
• Storage management software
• Storage device management software
• Storage infrastructure software
• File system software
• Other storage software

Throughout the year, this service will address the following topics:

• Emerging standards and their impact on storage software products and vendor strategies
• Convergence of backup and replication functions as well as technologies for continuous protection, business continuity, and disaster recovery
• Technologies and demand for file and block-based storage virtualization
• The growing demand for holistic archiving strategies and platforms
• Remote office backup and replication software strategies
• The emergence of disk-based backup and virtual tape library (VTL) from a software perspective

1. How has the mainstream adoption of storage networking changed the requirements for storage software?
2. What is the role of software in storage virtualization?
3. How are storage software vendors addressing the special needs of small and medium-sized businesses?
4. Will start-up firms manage to disrupt the major players by introducing alternatives to established, widely installed products?
5. What is the impact of server virtualization on the storage and storage software market?

IDC's Storage Software service analyzes the strategies, market positions, and future directions of major vendors in the storage software market. A representative list of these vendors may include:

Adaptec, Asempra, Atempo, BakBone, Brocade, CA, Cisco Systems Corp., CommVault, Dot Hill, Double-Take, EMC, FalconStor, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Iron Mountain, LSI Logic, Microsoft, NEC, Network Appliance, Neverfail, Overland Storage, PGP Corp., SonicWALL, Sun Microsystems, Symantec Corp., XIOtech, Yosemite, and Zantaz.

This service focuses on the following core research. In addition to the insight provided in this service, IDC may conduct additional research on specific topics, or emerging market segments, via research offerings that require additional IDC funding and client investment.

This document provides vendor market shares and a five-year market forecast and analysis for software used for data protection and recovery.

This document provides vendor market shares and a five-year market forecast and analysis for tools that manage storage devices, resources, capacity, and automation.

This document provides vendor market shares and a five-year market forecast and analysis for software that provides storage replication and snapshot capabilities at the file and data levels.

This document provides vendor market shares and a five-year market forecast and analysis for software that provides file and email archiving capabilities.

These documents discuss key companies that introduce change and innovation to the storage software markets as new products and technologies appear.

These documents describe end-user implementations of storage software strategies, challenges encountered, and actual results achieved.

These documents discuss end-user practices, attitudes, and needs regarding storage management based on IDC's demand-side surveys.

IDC offers a complete market intelligence solution customized to meet your business requirements. The array of products and services available to you includes:

• The opportunity to have your specific questions answered through personal interaction with industry experts who cover the topics and markets in your service
• Around-the-clock access to our market intelligence on idc.com, IDC's personalized Web experience
• A view of the market's future with 12 months of continuous intelligence about its direction and the reasons behind it, along with actionable advice for taking advantage of existing and emerging opportunities
• Special client discount pricing on purchases of research from other services
• Complimentary admission to IDC's annual Directions conference, where you'll hear our latest forecasts and network with IDC analysts and other industry professionals
• Complimentary invitations to monthly executive telebriefings, interactive forums designed to provide you with insights about research and strategies directly from IDC analysts

To find out how our flexible packaging options can meet your specific business needs, please contact your IDC sales executive.

As a privately held company, IDC believes that our customers are our primary constituency. A large percentage of every revenue dollar is reinvested back into our products, including more analysts, more geographic coverage, and extensive primary research.

Our steady growth over the past 10-plus years reflects our commitment to investing in our customers.