This IDC study presents the actual revenue achieved by the Japan storage software market in 1H05 and a market forecast for 2005-2009. IDC divides Japan's storage software market into five segments, namely backup/archive software, storage replication software, SRM software, file system software, and other storage software. The market is also segmented and analyzed based on OS, (mainframe, Unix, Windows, and Linux). The business trends among the major storage software vendors are also summarized in this study.

"Waves of compliance demand have risen in Japan with the enforcement of the Personal Information Protection Law, the Corporate Law, and the revised audit standards for financial studying (also known as the Japan Sarbanes-Oxley [SOX] Law). Rather than being assessed from the cost-effectiveness perspective, data protection and business continuity measures have become fundamental requirements in carrying out corporate activities. In response to such societal obligations, storage software has assumed a central role in IT governance by increasing the level of data protection certainty and reducing management load. In the future, storage software will probably be integrated with security products and integrated storage infrastructure management based on virtualization technologies will probably be adopted," says Yasusuke Suzuki, research manager, Storage Systems Research, IDC Japan.