IT Pros Vote for 2015 Storage Brand Leaders – IT Brand Pulse

IT Brand Pulse, a source for research, data and analysis about data center infrastructure, announced the results of its April 2015 IT brand leader surveys covering 12 product types.

IT pros from around the world responded to the independent, non-sponsored surveys, and were asked which vendors they perceive as the leader in the following categories: Deduplication Backup Target Appliances, Enterprise File Synchronization & Sharing, Enterprise HDDs, FC Disk Arrays, FC HBAs, FC Switches, iSCSI Disk Arrays, Mid-Range Tape Drives, NAS Disk Arrays, Scale-out File Storage Systems, Tape Libraries, and Unified SAN/NAS Disk Arrays.

“Our annual storage brand leader surveys were dominated by several incumbents who won for the fifth and sixth years in a row,” said Frank Berry, CEO and senior analyst at IT Brand Pulse. “Joining the established storage leaders in 2015 was Citrix, who IT pros voted as the market leader in Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing.”

Survey Highlights

Dell/EqualLogic emerged as a five years-straight Market Leader victor for iSCSI Disk Arrays, along with capturing Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation awards. In the number two and three Market Leader spots were EMC and NetApp, respectively.
“IT leaders choosing Dell Storage as the clear market leader for five straight years helps validate our efforts to listen to customers and deliver new arrays and features that continue to meet their demands,” said Travis Vigil, executive director, Dell storage. “Our Dell Storage focus on redefining the economics of enterprise storage has led to delivering solutions that remove complexity, optimize performance and remove unnecessary licensing costs to make our arrays the best overall customer choice in the industry.”

Citrix nearly swept the first IT Brand Pulse survey conducted for Enterprise File Synchronization & Sharing, taking the Market, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation titles. Price Leader went to Google, who came in second all-around in this product category. Microsoft slipped into the third Market Leader position.
“Only Citrix is addressing the needs of all employees in enterprises: delivering the consumer-style experiences that users want while also addressing the security and compliance requirements of IT,” said Bill Carovano, senior product line director, Citrix. “With Citrix, customers gain a next-generation mobile workspace with secure IT control and oversight that integrates with what they have today.”

Seagate, another multiple-year (three) survey champion, led Enterprise HDDs with its Market, Price, Performance, Service & Support and Innovation Leader awards. WD received the next highest Market Leader votes in this product category, followed by HGST.
“As a world leader in storage, we are proud to be recognized by industry-leading IT pros with the IT Brand Pulse award for Enterprise HDDs for the third consecutive year,” said Mark Re, Seagate’s CTO. “This acknowledgment validates our ability to deliver innovative new technologies and high-performance features, including enhanced caching, to the market. Our efforts, along with our commitment to field reliability, have clearly resonated throughout the industry and we are honored to be leading the charge.“

In the FC HBA category, QLogic was designated as Market Leader for the sixth year in a row. QLogic also continued its dominance of the other leader titles (Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation). Respondents chose Emulex as the number two Market Leader, with ATTO in the third slot.
“Being named the market leader in FC HBAs for the sixth consecutive year demonstrates QLogic’s on-going commitment to delivering value to IT organizations via cutting edge SAN solutions,” said Vikram Karvat, VP of products, marketing and planning, QLogic. “Market leadership in data center SANs requires innovation, performance, reliability, and service. Sweeping all six survey categories affirms QLogic as the preferred choice for IT professionals.“
 
NetApp took top honors in NAS Disk Arrays for the fifth year in a row, and swept Unified SAN/NAS Disk Arrays (second straight year).  NetApp secured all available leader titles (Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation) in both product categories. Replaying last year’s survey results for NAS Disk Arrays, EMC finished as runner-up Market Leader, ahead of HP.  IT professionals also selected NetApp as the Market, Price (tie with Dell), Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation Leader for Unified SAN/NAS Disk Arrays. NetApp once again held on to the Market Leader title from two-time past winner EMC, who finished second, with HP, in third. 

EMC proved to be the most dominant vendor in the annual Storage surveys by picking up three Market Leader titles:  FC Disk Arrays (sixth year in a row) and in two newly-added categories, Deduplication Backup Target Appliances and Scale-out File Storage Systems.  For FC Disk Arrays, the results were a repeat of last year:  EMC as Market, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation Leader; Price went to Dell. Market Leader runners-up were IBM and NetApp, in that order.  For Deduplication Backup Target Appliances, EMC swept all of the leader titles (Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation). HP came in the second Market position, with Dell and IBM tied for third.  EMC Isilon pulled out another across-the-board victory in Scale-out File Storage Systems (Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation) leaving NetApp’s Clustered Data Ontap 8.x  as number two and HP’s StoreAll Storage as number three Market Leader finishers.
 
IBM secured the prime honor for the second time in Tape Libraries, as well as seized four of the five remaining leader titles.  Respondents voted IBM for Market, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation awards, while giving Price Leader to Quantum (who was named runner-up Market Leader, in front of HP).

For the fourth time (in as many surveys,) IT professionals focused in on Quantum as the champion for Mid-Range Tape Drives. Quantum led the pack on all leader awards: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation.  HP and IBM rounded out the top three Market Leaders.

Repeating last year’s number one spot for FC Switches, (as well as the 2011, 2012 and 2013 winner), Brocade reigns as the favorite among end users for Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation. Mirroring the 2014 results, Cisco came in the backup position as Market Leader (and in all other awards in this category), with QLogic filling in the third Market slot.