Magic Quadrant for File and Object Storage Platforms

File and Object Storage Platforms Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

Key features and pros and cons of top File and Object Storage Platforms products:

Dell Technologies - Leader

Pros:

Broad portfolio: Dell has the broadest portfolio of software and hardware offerings in this market, addressing a wide range of unstructured data workloads with purpose-fit products.
Global supply chain: Dell is considered a trusted provider, especially in emerging countries that depend on its global supply chain to provide mission-critical hardware and software support.
AI readiness: Dell's close technology partnership with NVIDIA and investment in AI projects, such as Dell Data Lakehouse and DGX SuperPOD certifications, make Dell's storage infrastructure a good fit for AI workloads.

Cons:

Global namespace/edge caching: Dell PowerScale lacks certain advanced data management capabilities, such as global namespace and edge caching, which are required for some global enterprises' use cases.
Increased competition: Modern flash storage competitors with distinctive architectures, features and ease of use are winning over PowerScale on price in large-capacity deals.
ISV partner dependency: Dell depends on independent software vendor (ISV) technology partners to address specific critical requirements like advanced data management, data analytics and ransomware detection, which could impact delivery or roadmap of these technologies.

IBM - Leader

Pros:

AI leadership: IBM's leadership in the high-performance computing (HPC) market, with its parallel file system combined with IBM FlashCore Modules and IBM AI ecosystem of software for AI workloads, establishes it as a leading AI infrastructure provider.
Global namespace: IBM Storage Scale's active file and object management provides local read/write performance at the edge, irrespective of the location of the source data — whether in a data center, cloud or edge locations, including non-IBM storage solutions.
Product innovation: IBM continues to enhance Storage Ceph, which is optimal for customers looking for an open-source-based unified platform for all types of data (file, block or object).

Cons:

Portfolio complexity: Customers must carefully navigate the overlapping portfolio of IBM Storage Scale, IBM Fusion, IBM Cloud Object Storage and IBM Storage Ceph to choose the right underlying storage product(s) for their use cases.
Lack of cloud support: Storage Scale is not simple to deploy and consume in the public cloud, limiting its adoption in public cloud and hybrid cloud use cases.
General-purpose file storage: Storage Scale continues to be a HPC and analytics-centric solution with limited adoption in general-purpose enterprise file use cases.

Pure Storage - Leader

Pros:

Flash innovation: FlashBlade offers the industry's highest density and lowest power and carbon emissions per terabyte using NVMe QLC SSD, at a price point that enables a shift from HDD hybrid arrays.
IT SLA benefits: Evergreen//One and Pure1 AIOps features and telemetry monitoring provide clients with advanced SLA capabilities that yield favorable IT operations outcomes.
Hybrid colocation operations: FlashBlade's partnership with Equinix Metal provides clients with an effective platform strategy to extend on-premises infrastructure to a global colocation, thereby increasing capacity or facilitating data center exits.

Cons:

High CapEx: FlashBlade's capital expenditure (capex)-based Evergreen//Forever support offering markedly increases the cost of the storage array over the first three years period of the Evergreen//Forever program.
Limited ransomware detection: FlashBlade has limited native capabilities to detect ransomware encryption, malware or suspicious behavior, leading to potential operational issues.
Limited hybrid cloud: FlashBlade can't be deployed as a virtual machine or a container in AWS, Azure and GCP, limiting access to public cloud applications and tools.

Qumulo - Leader

Pros:

Cloud-native: Qumulo in Azure offers SaaS simplicity and cloud elasticity and leverages Azure Blob for long-term storage, and NVMe for performance and cache.
Scale anywhere: Qumulo's software provides the same features, performance, scale and ease of use, whether deployed on-premises on standard x86 servers or in the public cloud.
Global Namespace: Qumulo's Global Namespace provides local access to remote data from Qumulo instances spanning on-premises locations and multiple clouds.

Cons:

Lacks ransomware detection: Qumulo lags behind the leaders in this market in offering comprehensive ransomware detection and high-speed recovery capabilities.
Third-party appliances: Qumulo does not offer its own hardware appliances and is dependent on server vendor partnerships to bring innovation in flash storage and networking hardware.
Limited global coverage: Qumulo's lack of in-field support outside of North America and EMEA is a concern for customers in other regions.

VAST Data - Leader

Pros:

Market traction: VAST's strategic partnerships, marketing initiatives and sales campaigns have resulted in an increasing number of large customers, which in turn has had a positive impact on product improvements.
Efficiency at scale: VAST's implementation of low-latency storage using cost-effective QLC flash, advanced data reduction algorithms and high rack density deliver cost-efficiency and high performance for large-scale deployments.
Customer experience: VAST end users recognize the outstanding support, extensive knowledge and assistance they receive during the presales, architecture, ordering and deployment phases.

Cons:

Limited appliance strategy: VAST's lack of branded, integrated and supported appliance offerings limits its consideration by risk-averse global organizations that prioritize long-term hardware and software solution support and prefer appliance-based infrastructure delivery worldwide.
Frequent updates: Gartner clients cite concern with high-frequency software releases, as they pose challenges in ensuring stability in production environments.
Lacks features: The VAST Data Platform lacks enterprise features like synchronous replication, stretched cluster, geodistributed erasure coding and active cyber defense. In addition, it has limited traction for hybrid cloud deployment for production customers.

Huawei - Challenger

Pros:

Unified platform: Huawei's OceanStor Pacific offers a unified storage platform without add-on software layers to support multiple use cases.
AI traction: OceanStor Pacific is well-positioned to address the needs of AI infrastructure buyers, from the performance to data management aspects of AI workloads. Huawei uses proprietary hardware technology, including chipsets and flash drives, to increase density and improve cost efficiency.
Customer experience: Gartner clients give OceanStor Pacific high ratings for its customer support and services experience.

Cons:

U.S. sanctions: U.S. sanctions and the U.S.-China geopolitical situation have created challenges for Huawei, which in turn affect buyers by limiting global product availability and market expansion.
Limited cloud support: OceanStor Pacific has limited integration with other hyperscale public cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform, and as a result, lacks support for deep hybrid cloud storage integration beyond Huawei Cloud.
Limited SDS flexibility: OceanStor Pacific does not offer flexible software-defined solutions because it is delivered as an appliance. Its STaaS consumption model is only available as part of Huawei Cloud Stack offering.

DataCore Software - Niche Player

Pros:

Flexible CSP offerings: S3 protocol standardization on backup and archive applications along with a flexible SDS hardware configuration make DataCore an ideal solution for CSP and managed service provider (MSP) provider offerings.
Workflow automation: DataCore helps customers deploy and automate media workflows and repetitive tasks for the M&E and healthcare industries from its acquisition of Workflow Intelligence Nexus (WIN).
Energy efficiency: When used in an active archive solution, Swarm's Darkive adaptive power consumption feature powers down disks on redundant copies of data to conserve energy.

Cons:

Weak file support: DataCore's bolt-on fle services are weak, with limited protocol and feature support, making them less applicable for any file-centric or high-performance workloads.
Limited fleet management: DataCore lacks a global, centralized fleet management dashboard for multisite operations.
Limited AIOps: DataCore does not offer a consumption-based storage as a service (STaaS), does not provide a written data efficiency guarantee, and does not monitor capacity usage in order to optimize storage efficiency.

Hitachi Vantara - Niche Player

Pros:

Storage modernization: Hitachi Vantara VSP One Modern Storage Assurance provides clients with a data platform services program for life cycle management and nondisruptive upgrades.
Sustainability: Hitachi HCP all-flash storage systems improve overall operational sustainability metrics by providing very low carbon emissions per terabyte over the useful life of the storage.
Comprehensive searches: Hitachi's Content Intelligence data discovery tool unlocks data insights that improve operational efficiencies, lowers administration costs and improves responsiveness with automated workflows.

Cons:

OEM-dependent performance: Hitachi depends on a third-party partner to provide support for high-performance computing (HPC) use-case-specific workloads. Additionally, its native file services are weak compared to leading vendor offerings.
Public cloud absence: HCP is not present in any of the public cloud marketplaces, and as a result, has minimal to no hybrid cloud support with the major hyperscalers, including AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
Complex user experience: The complexity of Hitachi Vantara's documentation requires an expert to set up, configure and manage their products, potentially leading to operational disruptions.

IEIT SYSTEMS - Niche Player

Pros:

Flash SSD innovation: IEIT SYSTEMS' unique Quad-level Cell (QLC) NVMe solid-state drive (SSD) technology enables price, performance, density and power advantages compared to traditional SSD drives.
Application functionality: IEIT SYSTEMS provides integrated third-party video and image processing application software on its storage node as an integrated virtual machine application.
Upgrade flexibility: IEIT SYSTEMS' data management InView AIOps tool simplifies upgrades from third-party storage vendors by supplying its own data storage migration capability.

Cons:

Limited growth: IEIT SYSTEMS lacks brand visibility outside of its main region China, making it challenging for customers to justify its selection over global competitive options.
Lacks advanced SLAs: InfiniStor AIOps functionality is limited in its capabilities to support advanced platform SLAs, such as cyber protection and recovery.
Limited edge caching: IEIT SYSTEM has limited support for organizations that depend on access to centralized data from several edge locations.

Nutanix - Visionary

Pros:

Enterprise storage platform: Nutanix's NUS platform enables the consolidation of all customer storage workloads for the hybrid cloud centralized management.
Simplified operations: NUS offers simplified implementation, maintenance, monitoring and scalability. This design approach caters to the needs of IT generalists who may not possess extensive expertise in storage management.
Strong customer experience: Nutanix's customer support experience is consistently recognized by Gartner clients for its reliable and prompt responsiveness.

Cons:

Low deployment awareness: As a hyperconverged infrastructure enterprise platform, Nutanix is typically not considered by buyers looking for storage-only isolated infrastructure solutions.
Limited cloud adoption: Nutanix Files and Object have seen limited adoption in hybrid cloud deployments because customers have a hard time identifying use cases to effectively utilize cloud for unstructured data flow.
Low latency: Nutanix is not a good fit for low-latency transactional workloads at large scale. It does not support network file systems over remote direct memory access.

Scality - Visionary

Pros:

Exabyte scale: Scality's RING architecture supports exabyte size deployments, scaling in multiple dimensions, and independent scaling of performance and capacity.
Software flexibility: Scality appeals to prospects seeking software-only solutions that are capable of running on a wide range of industry-standard hardware, both at the edge and in the data center.
Strong reliability: RING has advanced data protection capabilities, supporting geographically distributed storage across multiple data availability zones and achieving zero RPO/RTO, 100% availability and 14 nines of durability.

Cons:

External providers reliance: Similar to other software-defined products, users must engage with vendor channel partners and OEMs to acquire comprehensive infrastructure solutions and access capabilities delivered as a service.
Turnkey appliances: Scality does not offer a turnkey appliance delivery model, leaving customers to deploy the solution on their own or, more commonly, with assistance from one of Scality's services partners.
Light files only: Scality is an object-storage-centric offering with an integrated POSIX file system, but it is not designed for traditional file-heavy data manipulation workloads, such as HPC or simulation-type workloads.

WEKA - Visionary

Pros:

Parallel file system: The WEKA Data Platform is a modern parallel file system suitable for the most demanding and large-scale HPC and enterprise AI workloads, where standard NFS access does not meet throughput requirements.
WEKA converged mode: WEKA Converged mode allows its file system to run alongside applications on the same servers to reduce compute costs and increase graphics processing unit (GPU) utilization.
Hybrid cloud: The WEKA Data platform is broadly available in AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Oracle public clouds to address hybrid cloud storage use cases and deliver high-performance file services.

Cons:

Specialized storage: WEKA's solutions are not cost-effective for backup and archiving, and lack the necessary integrations and certifications to be deployed as an application storage repository.
Limited S3 protocol and object storage support: WEKA supports S3 protocol access and can integrate with an external object storage to extend its namespace, but its support for full S3 protocol and object storage is limited.
Limited functionality: The WEKA Data Platform lacks some general-purpose features, such as native cyber resilience and advanced ransomware protection, AI-based operations, synchronous replication, data efficiency guarantees, advanced S3 APIs, and geodistributed object storage.

FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2024?

A: Dell Technologies, IBM, Pure Storage, Qumulo, VAST Data

Q: What does "Leader" mean in MQ terms?

A: Leaders provide mature offerings that meet market demand and have demonstrated the vision necessary to sustain their market position as requirements evolve. The hallmark of Leaders is that they focus on and invest in their offerings to the point where they lead the market and can affect its overall direction. As a result, Leaders can become the vendors to watch as you try to understand how new market offerings might evolve. Leaders typically possess a large, satisfied customer base (relative to the size of the market) and enjoy high visibility within the market. Their size and financial strength enable them to remain viable in a challenging economy. Leaders typically respond to a wide market audience by supporting broad market requirements.

Q: How do I interpret a Gartner Magic Quadrant?

A: https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/magic-quadrants-research

Report:

Top Vendor Products for File and Object Storage Platforms in 2024

File and Object Storage Platforms Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

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FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2024?

Q: What does "Leader" mean in MQ terms?

Q: How do I interpret a Gartner Magic Quadrant?

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