Research house GigaOm has reviewed 19 suppliers of scale-out file storage in a single report, including data protection, hyperconverged infrastructure, and parallel file systems suppliers alongside existing scale-out filer vendors.
The concept of combining data protection, HCI, parallel and scale-out file systems in a single report is somewhat contentious as these four unstructured data types are typically sold into different markets. For example, Rubrik’s CloudData Management (CDM) is not usually found in the same customer bids as Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS), Dell PowerScale, VDURA’s PanFS, or BeeGFS’s ThinkParQ. To that extent, this report seems peculiar.
GigaOm has been producing scale-out storage reports for several years. In 2022, it produced a High-Performance Scale-Out File Storage (SCOFS) Radar report. It also produced a separate Enterprise Scale-Out File Systems Radar report. In 2023, there was a single GigaOm Scale-Out File Storage Radar report, and now we have a new edition of that.
Radar reports evaluate product technical capabilities and feature sets against a set of 14 criteria and evaluation metrics to produce a graphic. This is a circular area divided into concentric inner Leader, mid-way Challenger, and outer New Entrant rings modified by two orthogonal axes, Maturity vs Innovation and Feature Play vs Platform Play, providing four quadrants overlaying the circles. Suppliers are also rated on their speed of development across the chart. There is a never-to-be-reached central bullseye area, a kind of development nirvana, which is always receding as fresh business needs develop.
This 2024 report was written by analyst Whit Walters. He reckons there are nine leaders. In rough leader order, they are NetApp, IBM, VAST Data, Dell, WEKA, Pure Storage, Cohesity, DDN, and Hammerspace. There are also ten challengers and no new entrants.
There have been other significant changes since last year as we will see in a minute.
The 19 suppliers are grouped into four categories:
- Mature platform plays: Cohesity, Dell (PowerScale), Hitachi Vantara (VSP One File), IBM (Storage Scale), NetApp (ONTAP), Nutanix, Pure Storage (FlashBlade), Qumulo (Core), and Rubrik.
- Mature feature plays: BeeGFS (ThinkParQ), DDN (Lustre), Quantum (Myriad, StorNext), and Scality.
- Innovative feature plays: OSNexus, Quobyte, and VDURA.
- Innovative platform plays: Hammerspace, VAST Data, and WEKA.
They are also ranked in three categories of development speeds as well; forward mover, fast mover, and out-performer. There is no supplier classed as a somewhat slow developer, meaning a forward mover. Cohesity, Hammerspace, VDURA, and WEKA are classed as out-performers maintaining a high development rate cadence. Everyone else is a fast mover.
The 2023 report edition was written by GigaOm analysts Max Mortillaro and Arjan Timmerman. We’ll show this 2023 report’s Radar diagram as a comparison point:
An inspection shows that there have been significant changes. In 2023, there were also four main groups of the 17 suppliers on the chart, but their placement was quite different:
- Mature platform plays: DDN (Lustre) and IBM (Storage Scale).
- Mature feature plays: Scality, OSNexus, and ThinkParQ (BeeGFS).
- Innovative feature plays: Quobyte, Quantum, and Panasas.
- Innovative platform plays: NetApp, Pure Storage, WEKA, VAST Data, Cohesity, Qumulo, Nutanix, Dell Technologies, and Hammerspace.
There were just two mature platform plays last year. Now there are nine. Last year’s three mature feature players have become four. There are still three innovative feature players but one different one – Quantum and OSNexus exchanged places – and there are now just three innovative platform suppliers when last year there were nine. The two new vendors this year are Hitachi Vantara and Rubrik.
Perhaps the change in analysts partly explains this radical re-ranking.
The report supplies informative snapshot views on the 19 suppliers’ offerings, strengths, challenges, purchase considerations, and use cases. It also has detailed scoring tables for business criteria, key and emerging features, and vendor positioning regarding target markets and deployment model.
Certain vendors did not participate in the analyst’s research process for the Radar report, and their snapshots and scoring were compiled via desk research. These vendors were BeeGFS, Cohesity, DDN, Hitachi Vantara, IBM, Pure Storage, Qumulo, Scality, VAST Data, and WEKA. That means 10 out of the 19 vendors featured in the report did not think it was worthwhile devoting any effort to actively contributing to it. Make of that what you will.
Getting a copy of this report means taking out a GigaOm subscription.