IDC released its latest “Worldwide Storage Software QView” study, covering the storage software industry’s growth by revenue and other trends in the third quarter of 2011. Companies spent $3.5 billion in this area throughout Q3, a figure that represents a 9.7 percent year-over-year increase and the second highest quarterly sales rate in the past decade.

“The market has broadly exited the recent phase of product refresh, yet sales continue to increase at impressive rates as users and suppliers come together to help improve the way organizations utilize, manage and protect their valuable corporate data and storage resources,” said Eric Sheppard, a director for the IDC research program dedicated to storage software.

Breaking the billions down a bit, industry data protection and recovery software remains the largest segment in this industry, accounting for 34.9 percent of the total revenue in the quarter.  Archiving software and device management platforms in turn has seen the most growth among the six segments where customers spent more in Q3. They’ve increased 12.2 percent and 11.3 percent year-over-year respectively.

From a vendor perspective, EMC, Symantec and IBM have generated the most storage software sales by revenue in the period. EMC has a definite lead with its 24.5 percent stake, compared to IBM’s 15.3 percent and Symantec’s 14 percent. NetApp came fourth on the list with an 8.8 percent cut of Q3 sales.

EMC is the most prominent player in this industry and in a number of others across the storage market, which can be credited to a number of things. A part of it can be attributed to the company’s willingness to invest both in acquisitions and in-house R&D, a point CEO Joe Tucci emphasized.  Another element is a very straightforward push towards the cloud, where storage – and the management software behind it – play a fundamental role. Most recently, the company rolled out the latest version of the Atmos Cloud Delivery Platform.