The Top 10 Storage Software Companies - 2005
as ranked by STORAGEsearch.com
reader statistics during 2005 |
| Rank |
Company (2004 rank) |
comments |
| 1 |
Symantec (1)
Symantec news |
Symantec's Veritas
acquisition passed without a ripple in the ranking they got from our
readers.
In the 5 years that we've published this (top 10 storage
software companies) list Symantec / Veritas has been #1 for 4 of them, and was
#2 on the single occasion (in 2003) when they missed the top slot. |
| 2 |
Arkeia (6)
Arkeia News |
In the summer of 2005
Arkeia launched an innovative pricing model for its network backup software. In
this scheme the price of the software was set by the amount of data which was
being backed up, and not by the number of servers. Although such pricing had
been common for online
backup services - this was the first time that a software vendor offered it
for software which actually ran on the customer's own hardware.
By
doing this Arkeia made their product much more attractive to fast growing
companies - who could now afford to buy enterprise quality software at an
earlier stage in their business development. Previously many fast growing
companies would face the choice of either using software which they would
eventually outgrow (and thereby incurring switching costs) - or paying
heavyweight pricing for products from larger vendors - which were uneconomic for
their current situation. |
| 3 |
EVault (5)
EVault news |
Natural disasters and
their consequences were often in the news during 2005.
Starting with
the new year reports showing the horrific extent of the Asian Tsunami - which
struck December 26, 2004 - the world was shocked later in the year - that even
the world's biggest superpower - the US got caught wrong footed with Hurricane
Katrina (August 29) - although by the time that the soon to follow on Rita
struck - most folks were already on their way out of harm's way.
Then
later in the year the earthquakes in Pakistan (October 8) killed 73,000 people
and made more than 3 million people homeless. Most of these people were still
living in tents during the winter - more than 3 months later.
Reminded
of the speed and devastation with which the forces of nature can smite
communities - the online
backup industry rallied round to educate users of the benefits it can offer
in these situations when it's not feasible to physically remove backups. |
| 4 |
FalconStor Software (3)
FalconStor
news |
2005 was another year
of high revenue growth in the virtual
tape library and iSCSI
markets. Many VTL oems use FalconStor's software within their products.
FalconStor
has been in this top 10 storage software list in every one of the 5 years
it's been published. And although the company has ranked higher in previous
years - that consistency - during a period when the storage market has more
than trebled in size - is a noteworthy factor. |
| 5 |
BakBone Software (2)
BakBone
news |
2005 was a difficult
year for BakBone's employees, customers and shareholders because for long
periods - no one could be quite sure what the company's revenue actually was.
Due
to accounting mixups which took ages to sort out - news announcements from
BakBone frequently had the flavor of the confessional - prefaced with numerous
apologies.
Although the public perception of the company was weakened
by these problems - that didn't stop BakBone's marketing aggressive plans -
which included the acquisition of
Constant Data in
November 2005. |
| 6 |
BMC Software
BMC
news |
This is the first time
that BMC has appeared in our top 10 storage software list. BMC has products
which manage and protect databases.
The company is probably best
known for its big iron - mainframe products - which include backup and
recovery products for the DB2 OS/390 platform. But among the many new products
announced in 2005 was BMC SQL-BackTrack for Microsoft SQL Server 2005.
In
January 2006, BMC announced an agreement to integrate
XOsoft's replication
technology, WANSync, into BMC SQL-BackTrack. |
| 7 |
CA (10)
CA news |
In October 2005 CA
acquired ILM software publisher -
iLumin.
CA also
announced it would port its BrightStor solutions to Sun's Solaris 10
Operating System for x64 (x86, 64-bit) platforms.
article:- Surviving the
Solaris x86 Wars |
| 8 |
Tabernus (4)
Tabernus news |
In 2005, Tabernus,
which had previously been involved mainly in the
storage test and HBA
driver market - launched its Disk Purge software for erasing data off
SCSI connected
hard disks.
STORAGEsearch.com
estimates that the fast growing
disk sanitizer
market, which barely existed just a few years ago could grow to over $2
billion by 2008.
article:- Data Removal
and Erasure from Hard Disk Drives |
| 9 |
NSI Software (7)
NSI news |
NSI won a lot of user
and reader awards in 2005.
In March 2005 NSI announced it had already
deployed 12,000 licenses of its Double-Take for Microsoft Exchange server
protection.
In March 2006 NSI Software changed its name to Double-Take
Software - based on the brand name of its best known product. |
| 10 |
Atempo (8)
Atempo
news |
Throughout 2005 Atempo
revealed it had some interesting customers using its software including the
French Navy (cartography department) and the developers of the cartoon series
South Park. |
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