Worldwide purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) factory revenues grew 4,1% year over year totalling $1,05-billion in the fourth quarter of 2015 (4Q15), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Purpose-Built Appliance Tracker.

For the full year, factory revenue was up 2,5%, to $3,35-billion in 2015. Total PBBA open systems factory revenue increased 6% year over year in 4Q15 with revenues totalling $958,2-million while the mainframe market experienced a decline of -12,8% for the same period.

Total worldwide PBBA capacity shipped for 4Q15 reached 1 160 petabytes, an increase of 25,6% year over year, while annual capacity was up 23,1% to 3,30 exabytes.

“Growth in the worldwide PBBA market remained strong in the fourth quarter, hitting the billion dollar mark for only the second time in any given quarter,” says Liz Conner, research manager: storage systems at IDC.

“Despite the continued commoditisation of storage hardware, PBBA systems vendors are adapting, putting greater emphasis on backup and deduplication software, meeting recovery objectives, the ability to tier to the cloud, and increased ease of use. The results are a more flexible and agile product that is helping to meet a wider range of data protection needs.”

EMC maintained its lead in the overall PBBA market with 67,7% revenue share in the fourth quarter, followed by Symantec with 12% share. IBM and HPE tied for the third position with 4% and 3,9% market share, respectively. Dell moved into the number five PBBA vendor position with a 2,3% share of the worldwide market.