The market for storage management software grew 10.6% to $3.6 billion in the last three months of 2010, IT market researcher IDC has found.

Information infrastructure vendor EMC once again held the largest slice of the market, with a 25% market share and revenues of $866 million. Symantec took the second spot, but its market share dropped from 18% in the last quarter of 2009 to 16%. IBM was in third place with a 13% share.

IDC said the storage software market is enjoying a “sustained recovery”. This is partly being driven by “new product innovations, and partly by a strong desire to address inefficiencies related to storing, protecting, and managing corporate data,” said research director Eric Sheppard.