EqualLogic for iSCSI, NetApp for NAS, Mellanox for IB, IBM for IB Storage, AWS for Cloud Storage

IT Brand Pulse, a source of data and analysis about IT infrastructure, announced the results of the February 2013 Brand Leader Survey. 

Survey respondents were asked which vendors they perceive as the leader in twelve network-related product categories:  Cloud Storage Gateways, iSCSI Storage, NAS, IB Storage, Ethernet NICs, Network OSs, Network Virtualization, LOM, IB Adapters, IB Switches, Low Latency Ethernet Switches, WLAN Controllers/Switches.

For each category, respondents chose the brand leader in Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation.

The results of the survey were highlighted by Dell, Broadcom, and NetApp being selected as Market Leaders for the third year in a row; Cisco was chosen as a Market Leader in three product categoies; and solid recognition of Amazon Web Services an IT brand leader.

"If you think Amazon Web Services can’t compete for storage product business," said Frank Berry, CEO of IT Brand Pulse. "Think again. Who are you going to trust more than Amazon Web Services to get data from your premises to the Amazon S3 cloud?"

For the third year in a row, Dell/EqualLogic was selected by IT professionals as the Market Leader for iSCSI Storage, and, for the first time since 2010, captured all remaining categories: Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation. EMC and NetApp rounded out second and third place, respectively, in the Market and Performance categories; HP finished third in Price and Service & Support.

"It’s truly rewarding  to see the IT community recognize Dell’s effort to offer innovative, highly virtualized storage arrays with the world’s best reliability and TCO," said Travis Vigil, executive director, product management, Dell Storage. "In addition to Dell EqualLogic sweeping this iSCSI category, we grew our customer base 30% this past year and achieved an all-time high for volume shipments in our fourth quarter. It’s also excellent to receive this strong user validation for our Dell Fluid File System NAS offerings that are quickly gaining traction. There’s plenty more to come from Dell as we continue to drive innovation into our portfolio to help customers reduce the cost and complexity of storage."

Amazon Web Services swept the first IT Brand Pulse survey conducted for Cloud Storage Gateways; taking the Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation titles. Riverbed, IBM, and Microsoft’s StorSimple came in a three-way tie for the runner-up Market Leader position.

"We are pleased that AWS Storage Gateway has been recognized as the Cloud Storage Gateway leader by IT Brand Pulse," said Alyssa Henry, VP, storage solutions, AWS. "AWS Storage Gateway joins our growing set of leading storage services – Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic Block Services and Amazon Glacier – in delivering cost effective, easy to use, and reliable storage to our customers."

For the third consecutive year, Broadcom has again secured the Market, Performance, Innovation, and Price Leader titles for LOM; giving up only the Reliability and Service & Support awards to Intel, who was also the runner-up Market Leader.

"Broadcom is pleased and honored to be recognized by IT Brand Pulse for the third-year in a row as being the market leader in Ethernet LAN on Motherboard (LOM) technology," said Greg Scherer, VP of server and storage strategy at Broadcom. "Having been selected as the market leader in the areas of Performance, Innovation and Price by a broad industry survey of IT professionals is a strong validation of Broadcom’s leadership position. Our 13 generations of Ethernet technology are the foundation of our NetXtreme Converged Network Adapter (CNA) family."  

In this month’s survey, respondents selected Cisco as the multiple winner in three  IT categories: Network OSs, Low Latency Ethernet Switches, and WLAN Controllers/Switches. As well as capturing the Market Leader award, Cisco swept all categories in each: Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation. IT pros cast Juniper’s JUNOS in the second place Market Leader slot in Network OSs with HP’s Comware, third; Dell/Force10 as runner-up in Low Latency Ethernet Switches followed by Brocade; and Aruba Networks took the spot behind Cisco as Market Leader in WLAN Controllers/Switches with Juniper in third.

"Cisco is gratified to be recognized for its brand leadership in Network OSs, Low-Latency Ethernet Switches and wireless LAN Controllers/Switches," said Shashi Kiran, senior director, Cisco data center and cloud networking solutions. "Our low-latency Ethernet switches address the need for very high-speed operations in the financial services and high-performance computing markets. The Cisco Nexus 3548 switch delivers the lowest latency on the market, with  up to 190 nanoseconds in WARP mode and 50 nanoseconds in WARP SPAN mode, due to  innovative Cisco Algo Boost technology integrated into the hardware, ASIC and software."

In Ethernet NICs, Intel repeated last year’s number one position as Market, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation leader. Broadcom came out ahead as Price Leader and finished across the board in second place. Emulex and Brocade tied for third in the Market Leader category.

"Intel is proud to be recognized for the second year in a row as the industry leader for high quality Ethernet products," said Steve Schultz, director of marketing at Intel’s networking division. "This acknowledgement is particularly relevant and timely, since we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of Ethernet."

IT perceptions showed Mellanox as the dominant leader in both IB Adapters and IB Switches as the company came out on top in all six categories: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation. Intel finished second in the two-vendor match-up.

"We are delighted and honored to be recognized by IT professionals as the leader in the IB adapter and switch markets, including our leadership in price, performance, reliability, service and support, and innovation," said Gilad Shainer, VP of market development at Mellanox. "Our FDR 56Gb/s IB interconnect solutions are providing end users with critical features for today’s data center: RDMA, low-latency, CPU efficiency, high performance and high density, low power and low cost, which enable the best return-on-investment."

IBM emerged as IB Storage Market Leader and led the way in two of the five remaining categories: Reliability and Service & Support. NetApp, the Market Leader runner-up, took the top slot in Price, Performance and Innovation. HP wound up third in the Market Leader category.

For NAS, NetApp three-peated as Market Leader and as the leader in four of the five remaining categories: Price, Performance, Reliability, and Innovation. EMC came in behind NetApp in the Market category but was named Service & Support Leader. Dell was in the third Market Leader position. 

VMware posted wins in all categories of Network Virtualization: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation. End users chose last year’s winner, Cisco, as the second top vote-getter in each of the categories.  HP took the third spot as Market Leader.