Dell, NetApp, EMC and HP Market Champions for Consolidated Storage

Info-Info-Tech Research Group, Inc.‘s Consolidated Storage Vendor Landscape report names Dell, NetApp, EMC and HP as market champions.

The report states that the only constant in enterprise storage seems to be that we always need more. Storage vendors are adding more capacity and IOPS as densely-packed virtual machine infrastructures drive more traffic to disk. The amount of data is growing exponentially, with some estimates indicating an increase of 20 to 30 times over the next ten years.

"The rising use of SSDs in midrange consolidated storage is a good example of where utilization features make a difference," said John Sloan, Lead Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group. "SSDs are a huge IOPS boost but they also are very expensive on a cost per terabyte basis. With auto-tiering you can provision less storage in the expensive solutions because only important data blocks are stored there. The rest of the data can be moved to a cheaper storage area. If you’re going to have to pay for SSDs you want to know you are getting optimal utilization of that expensive storage."

Ranking as a champion in this report, Dell previously focused solely on the SMB market. Their recent purchase of Compellent, in auto-tiering, has allowed them to move up market. With Compellent’s enterprise storage solution and their EqualLogic, Dell now addresses the needs of the SMB to large enterprise.

NetApp is recognized in offering flexible solutions in this report. Also a champion, its line of unified storage has one of the highest scores on the report’s advanced features evaluation. Strong replication capabilities and virtual integration, along with a newly revamped management interface make NetApp a standout solution.

EMC is also listed as a champion in the report. They have a strong portfolio and own the majority of VMware, which allows them to cater to a wide demographic. The organization offers a set of advanced features, including auto-tiering, SSD storage tiers, deduplication and thin provisioning.

HP is also ranked as a champion in the report. They offer high performance gear for the enterprise and flexible solutions for the mid-market. HP’s purchase of 3Par provides it with a cloud-ready solution for enterprise companies to fill out a portfolio that builds on its LeftHand arrays that helped reestablish HP as a storage leader in entry-level and mid-range. Features such as clustered iSCSI servers and thin provisioning at a competitive price point make HP’s solution an attractive buy and gained them the Value Award in the report

For the list of Info-Tech Research Group’s recommendations for selecting a Consolidated Storage vendor