Gartner has published the 2019 Magic Quadrant for distributed files and object storage, which places Dell EMC, IBM, Scality and Qumulo in the leaders’ box.
Here is the 2019 chart:
Sixteen suppliers feature – with no vendors dropped from last year or new vendors added. But don’t expect to see Western Digital feature in next-year’s MQ. The company is included in the Challengers quadrant but is exiting data centre systems – and that includes the proposed divestiture of ActiveScale object storage.
Seven suppliers, including top-ranked Dell EMC, scored lower on completeness of vision compared to the 2018 MQ.
In the chart below we have superimposed the 2019 MQ on the 2018 results and highlight major moves with yellow arrows, to show changes more clearly.
The 2018 MQ supplier positions and names are in light grey and the 2019 counterparts are in dark blue. We have added a low left to top right diagonal line to clarify supplier positioning.
Cloudian makes the most positive move, up and slightly right in the MQ ranks. SUSE, Dell EMC and Red Hat made big moves leftward showing a weakened vision rating. Chinese suppliers Huawei and Inspur made significant improvements in their ability to execute, as did Caringo.
Qumulo’s Molly Presley said: “Qumulo moved to the lead position as the most top and right. Qumulo is the only company in the Leader Quadrant that improved our position this year.”
Five suppliers could break into the leader’s quadrant next year; Cloudian and Hitachi Vantara from the challenger box; and Red Hat, NetApp and Pure Storage from the visionaries.
Gartner has named some vendors to watch. They are Cohesity, MinIO, Nutanix, Quobyte, Rozo Systems, and WekaIO.
Obligatory Magic Quadrant explanation
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant is a rectangular box presented as a two-axis chart divided into four equal-sized quarters. The vertical axis is a low to high ability to execute spectrum. The horizontal axis is a similar low to high spectrum rating completeness of vision. The top quarter squares are labelled Challengers on the left and Leaders on the right. The lower pair of squares are Niche Players on the left and Visionaries on the right.
