The storage software market grew just 3.6 percent year-over-year to $3.03 billion in the fourth quarter, IDC reported. EMC once again held onto the top spot in the overall market, with a 26 percent revenue share and 4.2 percent revenue growth. Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) was once again second, with an 18.3 percent market share and a 6.9 percent growth rate. IBM had the strongest quarter of the top vendors, growing sales 10.1 percent and coming in third with 13.2 percent of the market. NetApp came in fourth at a 7.5 percent share, while HP and CA took 4.5 percent and 3.7 percent of the market, respectively. NetApp, HP and CA each saw a sales decline of about 5 percent in the quarter. Data protection and recovery, file system software and archiving were the strongest segments of the market, according to IDC.