1/ Seagate, 2/ WD/HGST, 3/ Toshiba for Branded Enterprise HDDs

IT Brand Pulse, a source of data and analysis about IT infrastructure,  announced the results of its first brand leader surveys covering the emerging market for a new generation of open servers, storage and networking.

Survey respondents were asked which vendors they perceive as the leader in fifteen categories: SDN Platform, SDN Orchestration Software, SDN Controller, SDN Virtual Switch, SDN Switch, Layer 4-7 SDN Services Platform, VXLAN Gateway, SDN ASICs, SDN Monitoring, Microservers, Industry Standard Servers, Open Compute Project Servers, Open Compute Project Server Processors, Open Compute Project Storage, and Enterprise HDD.

IT professionals also selected Nexenta for contributing most to Software Defined Storage Innovation from 2008-2013.

According to Frank Berry, CEO and senior analyst, IT Brand Pulse, “A new class of IT infrastructure has emerged which is driven by open-source hardware and software. The importance of IT pro perceptions will increase as open servers, storage and networking migrates from the top-6 hyperscale companies to enterprise data centers.”

In the first ever SDN brand leader survey, IT pros selected networking giant Cisco as the Market Leader in five product categories: SDN Platform, SDN Controller, SDN Virtual Switch, SDN Switch, and SDN ASICs.  Runner-up Market leaders were VMware (SDN Platform), Juniper (SDN Controller and SDN ASIC), Big Switch (SDN Virtual Switch) and Brocade (SDN Switch). Cisco also finished ahead for the Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation in all the aforementioned categories, with the exception of a 3-way Price leader tie (with Intel and SanDisk) in SDN Switches.

“Cisco is pleased to be recognized across all five SDN categories for its brand leadership,” said David Yen, SVP/GM, Cisco Systems, Inc.‘s data center business group. “With Cisco ONE, XNC, Nexus 1000V, UADP and OpenFlow  enabled Nexus Switches, we offer network-wide visibility, programmability and flow control that is consistent across both physical and virtual environments, without compromising security and compliance. With Cisco, customers can adopt a low risk approach to implement SDN and extract greater value from their existing networks.”

Storage giant Seagate was handed Market, Price, Performance, Service & Support and Innovation accolades in Enterprise HDD, giving up only Reliability Leader to Western Digital/Hitachi GST, who finished second in all other categories. Toshiba placed third.

“The enterprise HDD market is currently riding a wave of innovation and we are proud to be seen as leading the charge in all of the critical areas of enterprise storage with these awards- particularly the Enterprise HDD Innovator Leader award,” said Scott Horn, Seagate Technology llc‘s VP marketing. “We are especially pleased that these honors were bestowed on us from those who work in the world’s most demanding 24×7 data centers every day to ensure high data availability, the IT professional.”

Start-up Accedian Networks took the lead for SDN Orchestration Software, gaining the titles of Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation leader. Huawei, as a newer entrant into U.S. competition, received the next highest votes in the Market category, with SDNsquare in third.

“Accedian Networks is very pleased to be recognized across all six SDN categories for our thought leadership and innovation,” said Phil Griston, VP business development, Accedian Networks, Inc. “In a complex heterogeneous mobile network, real-time visibility of available bandwidth and actual performance is essential to intelligently control traffic placed over those segments. With Accedian’s SkyLIGHT solutions architecture and Dynamic Performance Optimization (DPO) Accedian provides mobile operators with that visibility. This awareness means that mobile operators can optimize the use of their RF bandwidth by intelligently controlling traffic access at the edge, eliminating dropped packets and bandwidth wastage through unnecessary retransmission. This is what Accedian’s performance assured networking solutions deliver.”

The future network virtualization top-tier player, VMware, led the way as Market Leader for two categories: Layer 4-7 SDN Services Platform, VXLAN Gateway. Stiff competition emerged in Layer 4-7 SDN Services Platform with F5 placing second as Market Leader, and Citrix, third.  For the remainder of the category, VMware was named Price and Service & Support leader; F5 took the Performance, Reliability and Innovation titles. For VXLAN Gateway, F5 again came in the number two Market Leader spot, but it was VMware who swept the product category as Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation leader.

Another multiple product category winner, HP, was the respondents’ Market Leader choice for Microserver and Open Compute Project Server. This server market share leader also won the Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation awards (Microserver), and for Open Compute Project Server, Performance, Reliability and Innovation. Dell, who, for both categories was the Market leader runner-up as well as Price leader, rounded out the survey with the Service and Support title for Open Compute Project Server.

For SDN Monitoring, Big Switch, the SDN pioneer, was selected as the leader for Market, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation; giving up only the Price leader award to Microsoft, who finished second across the board. Arista captured third, all around.

Brand leadership in Industry Standard Server split down the middle with Dell named Market, Price and Service & Support leader and HP tapped first for Performance, Reliability and Innovation. HP also came in second for Market Leader, followed by IBM.

Intel, the dominant supplier of processors for traditional enterprise servers earned the Market Leader title for Open Compute Project Server Processor. With the exception of the Price Leader category (which went to AMD), IT professionals awarded Intel the remaining leader titles (Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation). AMD came in behind Intel as Market Leader, with IBM in third.

Breaking new ground in PCIe-based flash memory solutions (and major supplier to Facebook), Fusion-io, Inc.  was named as the Open Compute Project Storage Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation leader ahead of Quanta and Hyve Solutions, respectively.

About the Annual Brand Surveys
for Open Servers, Storage and Networking
IT Brand Pulse awards are the symbols for brand leadership because they are voted on by IT pros, and because the surveys are not vendor-sponsored. The surveys are designed to measure the pulse of brand leadership in specific product categories. Within each product category, respondents choose the overall market leader, as well as the leader in price, performance, reliability, service and support, and innovation. Respondents are provided with a category description at the start of each product section, a randomized choice of vendors answer, and the ability to write-in a vendor if not listed.

Respondents to the survey included:
AT&T – Server Administrator/Architect; Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) – Storage Administrator/Architect; Boeing – Data Center Manager; Booz Allen Hamilton – Network Security Architect; CalPERS, State of CA – Network Administrator/Architect; Caterpillar – Server Administrator/Architect; Citigroup – Network Administrator/Architect; City of Los Angeles – IT Manager/Director; Delta Airlines – Server Administrator/Architect; Duke University – IT Manager/Director; EarthLink – Server Administrator/Architect; Environmental Protection Agency – Network Administrator/Architect; ExxonMobil – Network Administrator/Architect; Fermilab – Network Administrator/Architect; Ford Motor company – Network Administrator/Architect; GE – IT Manager/Director; General Dynamics – Network Administrator/Architect; General Motors – Server Administrator/Architect; Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab – IT Manager/Director; JP Morgan – IT Manager/Director; Lockheed Martin – IT Manager/Director; Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) – Network Administrator/Architect; Lowe’s – Storage Administrator/Architect; Mattel Inc.- IT Manager/Director; Morgan Stanley – Network Administrator/Architect; NASA – IT Manager/Director; National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) – Network Administrator/Architect; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – IT Manager/Director; Northrop Grumman – Network Administrator/Architect; Oppenheimer – Executive/Management; PepsiCo – Storage Administrator/Architect; Porsche Cars North America – Network Administrator/Architect; REI – Server Administrator/Architect; Sandia National Labs – Network Administrator/Architect; Shell – Storage Administrator/Architect; Social Security Administration (SSA) – Server Administrator/Architect; Stanford University – Network Administrator/Architect; Staples – Network Administrator/Architect; Target – IT Manager/Director; The University of Chicago – Server Administrator/Architect; ThomsonReuters -Server Administrator/Architect; T-Mobile – Data Center Manager; Transamerica – Storage Administrator/Architect; UBS – Executive/Management; UCLA – IT Manager/Director; United Airlines – Network Administrator/Architect; Universal Parks and Resort – IT Manager/Director; University Of Michigan- Data Center Manager; University of Michigan Medical School – IT Manager/Director; University of Notre Dame – Storage Administrator/Architect; USC – Network Administrator/Architect; Verizon – Network Administrator/Architect; Yale University – IT Manager/Director.