Spotlight: Sales of Storage Software Expected to Soar

Worldwide sales of storage management software, the sophisticated programs that big companies use to squirrel away data in huge computers, will soar to $4.8 billion by 2002, from about $2 billion in 1997, San Jose market researcher Dataquest said. The increasing importance of databases to manufacturing and marketing operations is creating a boom for software that automatically backs up data and maintains file systems. Sales of such software rose 46% in 1997 to $1.33 billion. It’s expected to rise 21% each year through 2002.