IT Pros Vote 2017 Flash Storage and NVMe Brand Leaders

IT Brand Pulse, a trusted source for research, data and analysis about data center infrastructure, today announced the results of the recent IT brand leader survey covering Flash Storage and NVMe products.

IT professionals from around the world responded to the independent, non-sponsored annual survey in June 2017, asking which vendors they perceive to be leaders in these fourteen categories:

• All Flash FC Array
• All Flash iSCSI Array
• All Flash NAS Array
• All Flash NVMeoF Storage
• All Flash Unified SAN/NAS Array
• Flash Cache Software
• Hybrid HDD/SSD Array
• NAND Flash Chips
• NVDIMM
• NVMeoF Network Adapters
• PCIe NVMe Card – SSD
• Contributions to End User Adoption, NVMe (2013-2017)
• Driving the Next Wave of Flash Storage Technology Growth (2017)

“The maturing of the flash industry is evident as hot start-ups, along with their brand leadership positions, have been acquired by the traditional enterprise storage giants,” said Frank Berry, CEO and Sr. Analyst, IT Brand Pulse. “Micron surprised and impressed by beating traditional system leaders to market with an NVMeoF storage array, and was rewarded by IT pros with their votes for market leader.”

Survey Highlights

Micron

• NVDIMM
Micron locked down a repeat sweep of NVDIMM leadership (Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation), with HPE and Viking Technology earning all-around second and third.

"Systems architects rely on Micron’s persistent memory solutions for increased performance, expanded system functionality, and improved total cost of ownership," said Ryan Baxter, director of marketing for Micron’s Compute and Networking Business Unit. "Our leadership in NVDIMM innovation offers powerful solutions that our customers continue to recognize for a wide range of enterprise-class server and storage applications.”

• All Flash NVMeoF Storage
In light of the demise of Dell EMC’s DSSD business several months ago, the door opened for Micron to burst onto the scene as the choice for Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation winner this year, besting E8 Storage (second place) and X-IO (third) in every leader category.

“At Micron, we are committed to enabling our customers to gain the most from shared NVMe across multiple applications, delivering more efficient use of IOPS and storage capacity,” said Eric Endebrock, ‎vice president of storage solutions marketing at Micron. “We are proud to have our SolidScale platform recognized for its reliability and support in bringing this next revolution of all flash storage forward.”

Samsung Electronics

• SSDs
Samsung upped its presence in the annual flash surveys, not only taking Market Leader (fourth time), Innovation, Performance (both for the fifth year in a row) and Reliability (third straight year), but also adding Price and Service & Support awards for 2017. Western Digital and Toshiba followed, rounding out the top three Market Leader positions.

• NAND Flash Chips
Even though this product category has never been polled in the IT Brand Pulse surveys, Samsung’s accomplishment as 2017 Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation leader may not have been entirely unexpected: two years ago, voters singled out Samsung for Contributions to Innovation in 3D NAND Flash (2010 – 2015). In the case of NAND Flash Chips, Western Digital and Micron rounded out the top three Market Leader slots.

“We’re extremely honored that Samsung’s technological leadership and strong customer focus in solid state storage and NAND flash memory have been recognized by those ushering in the next generation of data centers and public clouds,” said Jim Elliott, corporate vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. “It reaffirms our commitment to performance, innovation and reliability with excellent service & support, so that we can continue to deliver best-in-class IT solutions.”

Dell EMC

• Contributions to End User Adoption, NVMe Technology (2013-2017)
IT pro respondents were asked to bestow special innovation achievement honors in the 2017 Flash Storage and NVMe brand leader survey. For “Who contributed most to end user adoption of NVMe technology over the past five years?” voters selected Dell EMC over second-place, Samsung. NetApp, Micron, Intel, and Western Digital filled in the remaining lineup, respectively.

• All Flash FC Array
In the six years All Flash FC Array has been included in the IT Brand Pulse annual survey, Dell EMC laid claim to a fourth victory. Recognized as 2017 Market Leader for All Flash FC Array, Dell EMC also picked up Price, Performance, Reliability, and Service and Support awards. Pure Storage—Market runner up in 2016—appeared on the winners’ board as Innovation Leader. NetApp and HPE finished second and third for Market Leader.

• All Flash iSCSI Array
Yet another four-peat for Dell EMC emerged as it swept all leadership in this category: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation, followed by NetApp and HPE, accordingly, as Market Leaders.

• All Flash Unified SAN/NAS Array
Dell EMC edged out the two-time overall reigning champ (NetApp) to capture Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation titles. Echoing both the flash iSCSI and FC results, NetApp took second place Market Leader, with HPE, third.

• Hybrid HDD/SSD Array
Dell EMC secured a fifth Market Leader spot and swept the remaining categories of Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support, and Innovation. Like last year, HPE was number two for Market leadership, ahead of NetApp.

• Flash Cache Software
In 2017, IT professionals voted in a new name—Dell EMC—as the victor for five out of six classes of distinction: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, and Service & Support. Western Digital, the incumbent Market Leader (and this time around the runner up in front of NetApp), held on to the Innovation honor.

NetApp

• All Flash NAS Array
NetApp extended its streak to four consecutive years as the Market, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation champion. Dell EMC, chosen as the Price Leader, was the second Market finisher, ahead of HPE.

“Digital transformation requires companies to modernize their IT infrastructure to support evolving business models and new revenue streams,” said Jeff Baxter, chief evangelist for ONTAP at NetApp. “As the fastest growing all-flash array vendor, NetApp has seen first-hand with our customers that high performance flash technology is a crucial component of modern infrastructure.”

Western Digital®

• PCIe NVMe Card - SSD
Western Digital collected its sixth Market, Performance, and Innovation awards, and third for Reliability. Intel (next in line for the Market position, before Dell EMC) broke up the clean sweep by being named Price and Service & Support leader.

“Our broad range of PCIe card solutions are among the most proven and widely deployed PCIe solutions for data centers,” said Anand Jayapalan, vice president of client and enterprise compute solutions marketing at Western Digital. “We are honored to be recognized by IT Pros, an award based on feedback by data center customers. It is further testament to Western Digital’s commitment to delivering an unmatched solutions portfolio for IT administrators managing the growing data needs of their most demanding cloud, hyperscale and enterprise application environments.”

Mellanox

• NVMeoF Network Adapters
For the second straight time, IT pros tapped Mellanox for Market, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation honors. Price (and number two Market) Leader was awarded to Broadcom. Cavium/QLogic was designated third, overall.

“We are honored to be recognized by our customers and peers for innovation and market leadership for our ConnectX® network adapter’s support for NVMeoF for the second straight year,” noted Rob Davis, VP of Storage Technology, Mellanox Technologies. “We have doubled down on our NVMe over Fabrics support with the introduction of our BlueField™ Storage SOC and ConnectX-5 network adapters. Both solutions offload the NVMe over Fabrics protocol, enhancing not only low latency and high bandwidth, but also offering extremely low CPU overhead.”

NIVIDIA

• Driving the Next Wave of Flash Storage Technology Growth (2017)
The final special achievement in innovation award in this brand leader survey centered on who and what was leading the charge in accelerating the flash industry. For the question, “Which company's technology will drive the next wave of growth for flash storage?” NVIDIA GPUs stood out in end user perceptions over the competitors AWS Infrastructure as a Service, IBM Watson Analytics and Google/Waymo Self Driving Cars (in order).

IT Brand Leader Surveys

IT Brand Pulse awards are the symbols for brand leadership. Winners are voted by global IT pros in surveys that are independent, non-sponsored research. 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. Voters are provided with a category description at the start of each product section, a randomized choice of vendor answers, and the ability to write in a vendor, if not listed.

Global IT Pro respondents to recent surveys include:
Aera Energy - Aetna - American Airlines - AT&T - Baird - Ball Aerospace – Banco Piano - Bank of America - Baylor College of Medicine - BC Liquor Distribution Branch - BJ's Wholesale Club - Bosch - Boston University - BT Group - Capital Group - Capital Power Corporation - Chanel - Chrysler - City of Los Angeles - City of New York - Coca-Cola – Columbian Chemicals - Cooper-Standard Automotive - Continental Tire - Columbia University Medical Center - Cox Enterprises - Daybreak Game Co - Diebold Nixdorf - DLL Group - Duke Energy - EnerCare - Expedia - EY - Federal Express - Federal-Mogul - Fermilab - Flagstar Bank - General Electric - General Motors - Google - Hetero Drug - Intuitive Surgical - Kaiser Permanente - Kia Motors America - Kingston - Komatsu Limited - Kroger Co - Kronos - Lawson Products - Library of Congress - Lockheed Martin - Marriott - Marubeni America - McCann Erickson - McKesson Corporation - Memorial Sloan Kettering - Merck - Molex - Molina Health Care - Morgan Stanley Nielsen - NASA Ames Research Center - NBC/Universal/Comcast - NOAA - Owens-Corning - Optum - PPG Industries - Quicken Loans - Raytheon - Ricoh - Saputo - Shaw Industries - Shell Oil - Sherwin-Williams - Spectrum Brands - Stanford University - Staples – Starbucks - Swagelok - TDS Telecom - TE Connectivity (Tyco) - Telus -Thermo Fisher Scientific - Tiger Corporation - T-Mobile - Travelport - UCLA - United Health Group - U.S. Bank - Universal Parks and Resorts - US Navy - UPS - Vantiv - Walmart - Waters Corporation - Wawanesa - WebMD – Western & Southern Financial Group - Xylem – Yahoo…& many more.

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