The global storage software market experienced its 14th consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in the first quarter of 2007.

IDC said in its latest Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software Tracker that the sector generated sales of $2.7bn, an 11.4 per cent increase over the same quarter one year ago.

"Storage software continues to exhibit positive year-over-year performance, driven by growth in the archiving, replication and file system software markets and a surge in demand for storage management software," said Rhoda Phillips, research manager for storage software at IDC.

"Businesses continue to implement solutions that can improve availability, recovery and information access across heterogeneous environments."

EMC led the overall market with 25.1 per cent revenue share in the first quarter of 2007. Symantec took the second position with 17.7 per cent share, while IBM finished third with 12.3 per cent.

Network Appliance finished fourth with 10 per cent revenue share. CA and HP rounded out the top five in a statistical tie with 4.4 per cent revenue share each.