The big news is that there are no significant changes in the Gartner 2019 Data Centre Backup and Recovery Magic Quadrant compared to the 2017 edition, and that angers Arcserve and Rubrik because think they deserve higher positions.
They have gone public with their disappointment, dismay and displeasure.
The 2019 MQ:
The scheduled 2018 edition had to be cancelled because most of the analyst team was recruited by Rubrik. This caused a delay until a May 2019 issue date, which was pushed because Rubrik complained and caused a further delay due to a review of its submission and status.
So here we are and no supplier present in the 2017 edition has improved their position enough to cross into a better box in the MQ,
Commvault is the top supplier and has been for 8 years. Veritas is in the Leaders’ quadrant and has been for 14 years. Other Leaders’ quadrant suppliers are Dell EMC, IBM and Veeam, and all three were present in the 2017 edition.
There are no challengers and four niche players; previous entrants Arcserve, Unitrends and newcomers MicroFocus and Acronis. HPE, a 2017 player here, has been ejected.
MicroFocus was added because it bought HPE’s Data Protector product; which was why HPE was dropped.
There are three Visionaries, newby Cohesity and two suppliers from 2017; Actifio and Rubrik. Although Rubrik was ajudged by the Garner analysts to have significantly improved its execution ability it was not by enough to take it over the border into the Leaders’ quadrant, hence its irritation.
Arcserve was rated with both a lower execution ability than in 2017, despite it having increased its sales relative to other suppliers and made organisational changes to increase its execution ability. It is not a challenger and, like Rubrik, made an appeal to Gartner’s ombudsman, and, also like Rubrik, effectively got nowhere.
Gartner counsels MQ readers to read a Critical Capabilities document and not make snap decisions based merely on MQ placements.
Note. Here’s a standard MQ explainer: the “magic quadrant” is defined by axes labelled “ability to execute” and “completeness of vision”, and split into four squares tagged “visionaries”, “niche players”, “challengers” and “leaders”.
