EMC retained its position as market share leader in the storage software space with a 22.4 percent revenue share in the second quarter, in spite of a steep decline of 9.8 percent in overall revenues for the sector year over year.

However, while the overall market continued its decline, certain sectors such as replication enjoyed growth. That’s according to the most recent storage software report from IDC.

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"The storage software market is slowly starting to recover with positive growth over the first quarter of 2009," says Michael Margossian, research analyst for storage software at IDC, in a prepared statement. "While only two out of the top five vendors experienced growth over the previous quarter, the replication market grew 5 percent compared to 1Q09 led by NetApp, which has been refocusing its efforts and grew 20 percent from the previous quarter."

Behind EMC in terms of market share, Symantec came in second at 18.5 percent revenue share, followed by IBM with 11.5 percent revenue share. NetApp came in fourth with 8.5 percent revenue share, followed by CA with 4.1 percent revenue share.

IDC says that the second quarter followed the normal sequential pattern this year, with growth over the first quarter.

"The data protection and recovery market had a sequential growth rate of nearly 3 percent, and the top three vendors in this market—Symantec, IBM and EMC—all had positive growth,” notes Noemi Greyzdorf, research manager for storage software. “In addition, the device management and archiving software markets each managed positive gains over the first quarter."