HP has moved from Challenger to Leader in this year’s Solid State Array Magic Quadrant (MQ), with Gartner positioning the company in fourth place behind Pure, EMC and IBM.
Magic Quadrant good news was few and far between for the likes of Cisco, Violin Memory and Nimbus Data who were demoted, while Dell and HDS were excluded from the MQ all together.
HP’s continued investment in its solid-state array portfolio, through enhancements to its existing 3PAR StoreServ 7450c product and introduction of a cost-effective, entry-level 3PAR StoreServ 7200c All-Flash Array, contributed to the company’s new Leader status.
Aggressive pricing and scalable sales and channel bandwidth were also viewed as strengths, but Gartner did issue cautions regarding HP’s reporting and analytical features, as well as a demonstrable ROI of its cost-effective alternative.
Pure Storage and EMC continued to lead the MQ, with Gartner stating that Pure Storage had ‘executed well on its vision of software-led solid-state arrays that leverage off-the-shelf cost-effective hardware components providing cost-effective SSAs.’
EMC, meanwhile, ‘has been able to successfully sell and market XtremIO due to its vast sales force, channel bandwidth and execution prowess.’
Next year may see Solidfire and Kaminario grab Leader status, as this year saw both companies edge closer to the Visionary/Leader quadrant boundary.
The losers of this year’s MQ included networking giant Cisco, who entered the SSA market through the acquisition of Whiptail in 2013.
Gartner issued the company cautions based on the lack of innovation since the Whiptail acquisition, in addition to the ‘attrition in the Whiptail organization and the lack of focus on SSAs from Cisco are negatively impacting implementation and technical support services.’
Nimbus Data, although having the foresight to see the advantages of SSA, was seen as not growing as fast as the market. Gartner cautioned the highly centralised top-down management approach, small sales and support staff and the lack of financial and organisational transparency.
Violin Memory was demoted having ‘traveled a turbulent path over the past few years.’ A failed IPO which resulted in a complete overhaul of the executive and sales teams, coupled with the fact that recent product lines are new to the market and have limited customer validation compared to prior series’, all contributed to the company’s MQ demotion to niche player.
Also in the niche area was newcomer Fujitsu, who appeared in the Magic Quadrant for the first time. The Niche area also saw improvement from Huawei, while other newcomer Tegile was positioned as a visionary having achieved good market adoption of the T3800 over a short period of time.
Those not even making the MQ include HDS and Dell, who did not meet the new stringent requirements set by Gartner. Criteria for inclusion requires that only arrays which have a unique model and ordering number, which do not have hard disk drives added, are included in the MQ.
