'Software-defined' drives soaring storage market

Software storage market up more than six per cent annually in Q3

A boom in software-defined storage saw the storage software market soar six per cent in the third quarter, according to IDC.

The analyst said that in Q3, revenue in the software storage market rose 6.1 per cent annually to $3.8bn (£2.43bn).

Throughout Q3, sales across all functional markets rose, but the software-defined trend was a runaway success.

"Up 39.4 per cent year over year, the software-defined storage platforms market is benefiting from an increased desire to control costs by utilising commodity hardware when building storage systems," said IDC's research analyst Jingwen Li.

EMC maintained its tight grip on the storage software market, grabbing 27.2 per cent share, followed by IBM and Symantec which took 14.2 per cent and 12.8 per cent respectively.