FC Storage Brand Leaders in March 2013: EMC Number 1 as Usual, Then HDS, NetApp, etc.

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

Survey respondents were asked which vendors they perceive as the leader in twelve network-related product categories: FCoE Storage, FC Storage, Firewalls, Ethernet Switches, WAN Optimization, Ethernet Network Monitoring, Application Delivery Controllers, Software Defined Networking, Embedded Blade Server Networking, FC HBAs, FC Switches, and FC Network Monitoring. For each category, respondents chose the brand leader in Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation.

“The March surveys were highlighted by IT perceptions of leadership in the new market for SDN, a major shift in perceptions of ADCs, and continuity in the core Ethernet and FC markets,” said Frank Berry, CEO of IT Brand Pulse. “VMware established early incumbency in SDN, Citrix overtook F5 in ADCs and Cisco dominated voting for Ethernet Switches.”

VMware/Nicira took the number one position as Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, and Innovation leader for Network Virtualization and Software Defined Networking, giving up only Service and Support in SDN to Cisco/Insiemi, who took second as Market Leader. Juniper was the IT professionals pick for third in the SDN category.

In this month’s survey, respondents selected Citrix as the winner for Application Delivery Controllers. As well as capturing the Market Leader award, Citrix leaped-frogged F5 in Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation. Though F5 finished in the second Market Leader position, it dropped to third – behind Cisco – in every other category except in Price, which went to Barracuda.

“We are honored to have been recognized by IT Brand Pulse as the overall application delivery controller brand leader, and to have been recognized by our customers who voted NetScaler with Citrix TriScale technology as the best ADC in every class,” said Graham Melville, director of product marketing, NetScaler product group, Citrix. “As a cloud computing company striving to empower people to work and collaborate from anywhere by offering access to apps and data on any of the latest devices, we are especially pleased to have been recognized ‘first’ in innovation and market leadership.”

Last year’s Innovation winner, Riverbed, swept WAN Optimization for 2013, securing the leadership again but this time also adding Market, Price, Performance, Reliability and Service & Support to its crown. Cisco took second across the board, with F5 and Citrix ending up in a tie for the third Market Leader position.

“Riverbed is honored to be recognized by IT Brand Pulse as the leader in WAN optimization. Winning in all categories – price, performance, reliability, service & support and innovation – is truly a testament of the value we provide to our customers and the hard work of our employees,” said David Greene, CMO, Riverbed. “The combination of strategic IT initiatives such as cloud and consolidation with the need to support more workers in more locations make the WAN critical to everything distributed organizations do. We’re pleased to be recognized for helping IT to deliver the superior levels of service that end users care about with the quick ROI that makes it easy to justify.”

For Ethernet Network Monitoring, SolarWinds was the IT pros pick for the Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation titles.  Runner-up status in all categories went to Cisco’s NetFlow, while third place went to Nagios in Market, Price, Performance, and Innovation (and a tie in Reliability with HP).

“At SolarWinds, we are constantly evolving our IT management product portfolio to offer the most comprehensive, affordable and easy-to-use solutions for IT pros,” said Patrick Hubbard, head geek at SolarWinds. “We started with our popular Engineer’s Toolset and have grown to offer a wide breadth of enhanced network management and monitoring products and more. We are thrilled to be recognized for our leadership in the network management space with this honor from IT Brand Pulse and from our own end users.”

In its fourth year in a row of leadership, QLogic led the way in every category of FC HBAs, (Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation). Brocade was the overall  runner-up, followed by Emulex.

“QLogic’s continued dominance in FC HBAs is demonstrated by capturing the Market Leader Award in FC HBAs for the fourth consecutive year, as well as sweeping all six categories in the 2013 IT Brand Pulse FC HBA Brand Leader survey,” said Amit Vashi, VP marketing, host solutions group, QLogic. “Being recognized as the Leader of Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation shows when IT professionals think of FC, they think of QLogic.”

For the third straight year, Cisco was the choice of IT professionals as the Market Leader for Ethernet Switches; the second year in a row for Firewalls; and, in the first year this category was included in the survey, was named Market Leader for FC Network Monitoring. For Ethernet Switches, HP finished second in the Market Leader category, with Brocade, third. Cisco captured Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation titles, but Dell was selected as Price Leader. For Firewalls,  Check Point filled the runner-up Market Leader slot followed by Juniper. Cisco again gave up only one remaining category (Price) to Dell.

For Embedded Blade Server Networking, HP emerged as a repeat top choice for Market, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation leader. This time around though, HP took back the Performance title it lost in 2012. Dell, which also led the Price category, was number two behind HP in the Market Leader standings with IBM third.

EMC continued its domination in IT Brand Pulse storage surveys by taking Market Leader titles in both FC Storage and FCoE Storage. Though EMC has won the Market Leader title three straight years for FC Storage, this is the first time it has captured all remaining categories (Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation). Rounding out second and third were NetApp and HDS, in that order. For FCoE Storage, NetApp and IBM came in, respectively, behind EMC, who also topped the leader board for Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation. The Price Leader title went to Dell.

                        Market Leader FC Storage

IT perceptions showed Brocade sweeping all categories of FC Switches (Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation). This is Brocade’s third Market Leader win in as many years.  End users chose Cisco, as the second top vote getter in each of the categories (except  Price) and QLogic finished in third place for Market Leader.