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This is a leader's square for storage leaders, IBM, Dell EMC and Scality tell wide-eyed Qumulo

All the node movers and shakers in Gartner's paranormal polygon

Eight object and distributed file storage suppliers have shuffled positions in Gartner's annually updated Magic Quadrant for the sector – two new entrants, three promotions, two demotions and an exit.

The infamous paranormal polygon is defined by an Ability to Execute vertical axis and a Completeness of Vision horizontal axis. The square is sub-divided into four components labelled as visionaries, niche players, challengers and leaders.

Suppliers are placed in one of these boxes so their supposed merits can be quickly compared.

Gartner_object_dist_files_MQ_2018

The three leaders from last year – Dell EMC, IBM and Scality – have been joined by Qumulo, promoted from the visionaries' quadrant to the leaders' box.

Last year's equivalent quizzical quadrangle for comparison:

Gartner_object_dist_files_MQ_2017

We see that:

  • Qumulo has been promoted from visionary to leader
  • Chinese supplier Inspur enters as niche player
  • DDN falls back as niche player
  • Ditto SUSE but not so much
  • NetApp moves from niche player to visionary
  • Western Digital (HGST) and Cloudian get promoted from niche players to challengers
  • Pure Storage enters as a visionary
  • Huawei has been promoted as a niche player
  • StorageCraft has been ejected from the niche player box and the MQ entirely
Caterpillar advertisement from 1998

Why two scale-out NAS, IBM? One's a pickup, the other's a juggernaut

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Gartner analysts have assumed that, by 2022, more than 80 per cent of enterprise data will be stored in scale-out storage systems in enterprise and cloud data centres, up from 40 per cent in 2018.

If that plays out, it'll be heartening news for suppliers and next year's edition may become even more crowded. ®

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