IT Pros Vote 2019 Brand Leaders for Storage

IT Brand Pulse, a source for research, data and analysis about data center infrastructure, announced the 2019 Storage Brand Leaders, voted by IT professionals from around the world.

The independent, non-sponsored annual survey asked which vendors are perceived to be the market, price, performance, reliability, innovation, and service and support leader for 14 product categories.

“Large storage vendors flexed their brand muscles in this round of surveys,” said Frank Berry, CEO and senior analyst, IT Brand Pulse. “Not a single start-up made the leader board as traditional leaders such as Dell EMC, Microsoft, Pure Storage, Seagate and Veritas dominated IT pro voting for mature and emerging products.”

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Survey Highlights

Dell EMC

Enterprise Backup Software & Appliances
For the second year in a row, Dell EMC was chosen for Market, Performance, Reliability, and Service and Support leadership. Veeam held on to the Innovation title for the third year while snagging Price and coming in second for Market leader. Commvault tied with Veritas for third in voting for Market leader.

Hybrid (HDD and SSD) NAS Arrays
IT Pros voted Dell EMC as Market leader for Hybrid NAS Arrays, dethroning former eight-time leader, NetApp. Dell EMC also gained Price, Performance, and Service & Support. NetApp-second place Market leader-claimed the Innovation leader award as well as tying with Dell EMC for Reliability. HPE rounded out the top three Market leader positions.

Hybrid (HDD and SSD) SAN Arrays
Dell EMC controlled the board and was recognized for the seventh time as Market Leader as well as Price, Performance, Reliability, Innovation, and Service & Support staying in front of second and third Market finishers NetApp and HPE.

Scale Out File and Object Storage Appliances
In this newly-added category, Dell EMC was the clear winner across the board for Scale Out File and Object Storage Appliances, as IT Pros chose the company for leadership in Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Innovation, and Service & Support. NetApp finished second as Market leader, followed by IBM in third.

Servers for SDS
Dell EMC headed up all six leader categories in the Servers for Software Defined Storage survey for the second year in a row: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Innovation, and Service & Support. Cisco was named second for Market leader followed by HPE.

Unified (SAN/NAS) Disk Arrays
Dell EMC pulled out another complete victory being selected Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Innovation, and Service & Support leader; unseating former five-time Market leader, NetApp. NetApp was voted second all-around in this product category and Hitachi Data Systems in third for Market.

Microsoft

Enterprise Archive
Another new survey category, IT pros cast their votes for Microsoft as Market, Price, Reliability, Innovation, and Service & Support leader. Veritas was voted Performance leader as well as second place Market leader. Barracuda settled for third.

Enterprise File Synch & Sharing
Microsoft took control as Market leader as well as Reliability and Service and Support. Google, second place Market leader (last year’s Market leader), was named Price for the fifth time in as many surveys while also claiming Performance and Innovation. Dropbox came in third respectively.

Pure Storage

Ageless Storage
Pure Storage dominated across the board for Ageless Storage; selected by IT Pros as Price, Performance, Reliability, Innovation, Service and Support leader and for the second year in as many surveys, gained the Market leader title. Dell EMC was voted second for Market with IBM following close behind.

On-Premises Enterprise Storage as a Service
Pure Storage has completely surpassed Zadara Storage after a three-year streak with Zadara Storage as Market leader. In addition to Market leader, Pure Storage nearly swept the board, also recognized for Price, Performance, Reliability, and Innovation. The title for Service and Support was a close call with IBM coming out on top. In another tight race, IBM was voted second for Market leader followed by HPE.

“Here at Pure, customers are our number one motivation. Our goal is to constantly innovate on product, on business model, and on customer service, and the result isn’t just the leading growth rate in our category – It is the leading customer satisfaction in our category,” said Robson Grieve, CMO, Pure. “We are honored to be recognized by IT Brand Pulse as the global market leader in the Ageless Storage and On-Premises Enterprise Storage as a Service, and these awards provide further validation that we are on the right track.”

Seagate

Enterprise HDDs
While the top two companies of Enterprise HDDs were close in all categories, Seagate has proven itself a leader by being voted Market for the seventh year in a row; also picking up titles for Price, Performance, Reliability, Innovation, and Service and Support, sweeping the board for a two-year streak. Western Digital came in second for all categories trailed by Toshiba.

“Recognition from IT Brand Pulse validates Seagate’s mission to maximize humanity’s potential through precision engineered data management solutions,” said Sharmistha Mallik, global product marketing manager, Seagate. “As enterprise HDD market leader seven years running, and cross-category leader for the past two years, Seagate continues to lean on trusted performance, solid reliability, and ironclad enterprise security to meet the unprecedented growth and efficiency needs of cloud storage.“

SolarWinds

Storage Performance Validation Software and Appliances
SolarWinds almost had a repeat of last year’s clean sweep. IT Pros named SolarWinds leader for five of six segments: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, and Innovation. NetApp received Service and Support leader and was voted second for all other segments. Ixia and SANBlaze tied for the third Market slot.

“Receiving five accolades for storage performance in the latest IT Brand Pulse awards is a true testament to our dedication to listening to our customers and addressing their end-to-end storage management needs,” said Joe Kim, EVP and global CTO, SolarWinds. “Providing IT pros powerful, affordable, and easy-to-use IT management software is at the core of our philosophy and commitment to making their jobs easier.”

Veritas

Distributed Database Backup and Recovery
In the third IT Brand Pulse survey for this product category, IT Pros voted Veritas as the new leader across the board for Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Innovation, and Service and Support; unseating previous leader Rubrik Datos IO who had swept the board twice before. Commvault and Rubrik Datos IO finished as second and third Market leaders, in that order.

VMware

Scale out File and Object Storage Software
In this new survey category, VMware surpassed the competition in all segments chosen as the overall Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Innovation, and Service & Support leader. Red Hat finished as second Market leader, then Microsoft.

Global IT Pro respondents to recent surveys include:
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.