2024 Enterprise Infrastructure for AI Brand Leaders

This market report was written by IT Brand Pulse.

2024 Enterprise Infrastructure for AI Brand Leader Survey Report
This brand leader survey covers eight categories of Enterprise Infrastructure for AI: Servers, Primary Storage, File and Object Storage, Network Switches, SmartNICs, High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM), GPUs, and CPUs.
AMD, Dell Technologies, Intel, NetApp, NVIDIA, Pure Storage, and Samsung chosen as Innovation and/or Market Leader in 8 product categories

IT Brand Pulse announced the results of the 2024 IT Brand Leader Survey covering enterprise infrastructure for AI. Generative AI is considered the biggest technology inflection point in human history with hundreds of billions of dollars already invested to create a new universe of hardware, software, systems, and services designed for enterprise AI.

This survey covering 8 product categories is just the beginning of brand leader research that eventually will cover dozens of AI product categories and hundreds of AI vendors.

“At this inflection point, AI versions of products have emerged and traditional brand leaders are being challenged,” said Frankie Berry, managing partner and senior analyst. “The survey results indicate NVIDIA has jumped to the front of the pack as the most dominant brand, while the strong have gotten stronger as IT pros voted for familiar brands in all eight categories of enterprise infrastructure for AI.‘

2024 Brand Leaders – Enterprise Infrastructure for AI

Survey Highlights

Servers and Primary Storage for AI – IT Pros Choose Dell as Market and Innovation Leader
The firm is a perennial market and innovation brand leader for enterprise servers and primary storage. It moved decisively into AI by introducing its AI factory offering validated full-stack solutions. IT pros responded by voting Dell the market leader for both product categories.

Primary Storage and File and Object Storage for AI – Pure Storage Selected as Innovation Leader
The company is a recurrent innovation leader for primary storage and file and object storage. IT pros recognize their patented DirectFlash modules, which allow its AFAs to communicate directly with raw flash storage, and the pioneering development the company has done with low-cost QLC flash. AI is mostly a high-performance and high-capacity environment with a critical need to get massive amounts of data in and out of storage as fast as possible. Our survey results indicate IT Pros believe Pure Storage innovation is exactly what they need for AI.

File and Object Storage for AI – NetApp Voted Market Leader
Another incumbent enterprise brand leader is this company for file and object storage. The survey results indicate the firm that pioneered easy-to-use enterprise file storage is expected to lead in AI and object file storage for the enterprise.

Network Switches for AI – NVIDIA Unseats Incumbent Market Leader, Dominates Voting for Innovation Leader
Since 2008 when IT Brand Pulse was founded, Cisco was voted as the market leader for Ethernet switches and Mellanox as the market leader for higher bandwidth and lower latency IB switches. Apparently, IT pros realize AI needs high-bandwidth and low latency because they voted NVIDIA (formerly Mellanox) network switches as the market and innovation leader.

SmartNICs for AI – AMD Inaugural Market Leader
In our first-ever survey measuring brand leadership for SmartNICs, AMD (formerly Xilinx and Pensando SmartNICs) was voted the market leader, reflecting IT pro awareness of Xilinx’s longtime market presence and leadership in this arena.

SmartNICs for AI – NVIDIA Inaugural Innovation Leader
In our inaugural survey for SmartNICs, NVIDIA (formerly Mellanox SmartNICs) was voted the innovation leader. The survey results indicate IT pros value the tight integration and added value of SmartNICS tightly integrated with NVIDIA network switches and GPUs.

High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) for AI – Samsung Sweeps Market and Innovation Leader awards
Although embedded in CPU, GPU, and specialized AI processor products, HBM is perceived by IT pros as an important differentiator. The halo of the Samsung household name shined on their HBM product brand as IT pros voted Samsung as the market and innovation leader.

GPUs for AI – NVIDIA is the Undisputed Market and Innovation Leader
Any other results would be shocking. Jensen Huang and NVIDIA are leading a new era of GPU-centric AI computing that is global news almost impossible to avoid. The only surprise is that NVIDIA did not receive all the votes for GPU Market and Innovation Leader.

CPUs for AI – Intel voted Market and Innovation Leader for CPUs
For the 17th consecutive year, Intel was voted market and innovation leader for CPUs, and this time it was the first year IT pros voted for CPUs for AI. In 2nd place, AMD was a notable challenger with only 9 percentage points separating the companies.

The Most Dominant Brands in Enterprise AI Infrastructure

Market Leader and Innovation Leader Combined
NVIDIA was first place in three of the 5 brand leadership categories with the highest percentage of votes, while Intel remains dominant with their CPUs.

Market Leader
The most dominant market Leader brand in AI is NVIDIA for GPUs. The company received almost 80% of IT pros votes with second place Intel receiving a surprisingly high 12% of the votes. Intel and Samsung, brands long dominant in the CPU and DRAM markets, are the second and third strongest market leader brands in enterprise infrastructure for AI.

Innovation Leader
NVIDIA network switches, formerly known as Mellanox network switches, received the highest percentage votes for innovation leader. NVIDIA GPUs received the second highest percentage of votes for innovation leader.

IT brand leader survey respondents are IT pros at: American Airlines – American Express – Adobe Systems – Advocate Health Care  – Aetna – AF Group – Air Force Space Command – Allstate – AT&T – BAAQMD – Bank of America – Beckman Coulter – Boeing – Baylor College of Medicine – Bosch – Boston Scientific – Brinker International – CA Department of Insurance – Capital Group – Caesars Entertainment – Celanese Corporation – Citibank – City of Los Angeles – Combined Insurance – Coca-Cola  – Colliers – Comcast – Cox Enterprises – CPS Energy – Daiwa Capital Markets – Dana Foundation – Daybreak Game Co. –  Disney – DLL Group – Dow Corning Corp – Duke University – Edmunds – Encore Capital Group – EnerCare – Ensco – Exelon Corp. – ExxonMobil – EY – FedEx – First Acceptance Corp. – Four Seasons –  Franklin Templeton – General Electric – General Motors – Great-West Life – GWDG – HCSC – Kaiser Permanente – Kingston – LANL – Library of Congress  – Lockheed Martin – LRZ – Michael Kors – MIT IS&T –  Morgan Stanley – NASA Ames Research Center – NIH – NBC/Universal/Comcast – NCR – Optum – Orbital ATK – Polycom, Inc. – Quicken Loans – Raytheon – Ricoh – Ryanair  – Schindler Elevator Corp. Shaw Industries – Siemens Corp. –  Snyder’s-Lance  – Spectrum Brands – Stanford University – Staples – Starbucks – States of AL CT, LA and MT – Time Warner – TMZ – Torchmark – Tiger Corporation – T-Mobile – UCLA – United Health Group – U.S. Dept. of Labor  – U.S. Navy – UPS – Veolia – Verizon – Walmart – Weizmann Institute of Science – West Pharmaceutical Services – Yale – Yazaki, and more.