IDC has just published its second quarter 2014 Worldwide Storage Software Qview survey, ranking IBM as the world’s top supplier of Software-defined Storage Platforms (SDS-P).

SDS-P is described as ”a new functional market added to the total storage software market that covers block, file, object, and/or hyper-converged software offerings that enable the creation of a storage system.” In other words, it’s a platform that provides a full suite of storage services via a software stack running on commodity hardware built using off-the-shelf components.

IDC noted that storage software is also raking in plenty of cash these days – almost $3.8 billion in the second quarter, which is a 6.3 percent increase from the same period last year. However, while IBM is shifting more SDS-Ps, EMC Corp. remains ‘the daddy’ when it comes to overall storage software revenues. EMC led the way with a 25.9 percent market share, followed by IBM at 16 percent and Symantec at 13.3 percent.

Several categories of software are tracked in IDC’s report, including “Data protection and recovery”, which is valued at $1.45 billion for the quarter, a rise of 10.2 percent year-on-year. It also tracks the “Storage and device management” market, which is worth some $708 million, up 4.1 percent; “Storage infrastructure”, worth $448 million, up 10.8 percent; and “Software-defined storage platforms”, worth $133 million, up 15.7 percent during the last quarter.

IBM has a number of products in the SDS-P segment, including Elastic Storage (its rebranded GPFS parallel file system); San Volume Controller (SVC); and its Virtual Storage Center, which comes with SVC and adds capabilities like backup, restor and visual administration for storage management.

“IBM Software Defined Storage capabilities are providing clients with the kind of scalability and fast data access their customers, employees and partners are not just demanding, but expecting,” said Jamie Thomas, general manager, for Storage and Software Defined Systems at IBM.

Looking ahead, if Server San, object storage software and hyper-converged system storage revenues all keep on rising like this, the SDS-P segment could soon become one of the most hotly contested areas in SDS.

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