back to article All Dell breaks loose in latest Gartner disk array magic quadrant

Dell has become a top-four player in disk arrays, as IBM and NetApp are left behind in Gartner's 2015 Magic Quadrant for general purpose disk arrays. Two_MQs Gartner Magic Quadrants for general purpose disk arrays – 2014 (left) and 2015 (right) ... Click to enlarge Nimble Storage enters the leaders' quadrant for the first …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Times are a changing

    Oh dear, what on earth can NetApp do?

    Good for Nimble, it is good gear.

  2. Cloud 9

    Question Time - with David Nimbleby

    Nice to see Nimble move in to the top right hand corner. It's a solid product and they've done well.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Question Time - with David Nimbleby

      Yep, good product, but scalability (performance) quickly becomes an issue.

      Their support is suspect: one customer I had called 3 times and got 3 different answers.

      Also, what they are offering is no longer unique - their 18 month window closed with the price point of TLC flash and the latest multi-terabyte drives.

      Contrast it with Tegile, Tintri and Dell, who all have good hybrids at around the same pricepoints.

      And then contrast it with flash arrays - why bother with hybrid when the price of enterprise flash is dropping so rapidly?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Question Time - with David Nimbleby

        Let's see if you are correct when the next quarter figures are announced.

        Disclaimer, Nimble employee. I win at least 50% of the fights I'm in. And not always on price, despite what NetApp says

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Question Time - with David Nimbleby

        Sir or madam, please reveal yourself. You either don't know what you are talking about or work for a competitor.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well done Nimble!

    Good to see you there! Congrats! There's a sense of vindication for some of us who bought your gear almost 3 years ago.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "NetApp has been losing market share,”

    Article: “While the majority of new customer sales are cDOT, the transition is taking years, with many customers not wanting or needing to move to clustered Data Ontap. During this transition, NetApp has been losing market share,”

    Disclosure – Netapp Employee Here. While I agree that there is focus on conversion to CDOT here at NetApp, of course it is going to take years. Storage is a 5+ -year investment and for all of NetApp customers to cycle through a tech refresh from 7-mode to CDOT would theoretically take five years, so I don’t see how that is a negative, this stuff takes time, not different that EMC Clarion to VNX or Symmetrix to VMAX. In fact I just replaced a 7-year old Clarion with FAS this week. Customers hang on to old stuff for a long time if it is working for them. In regards to “NetApp has been losing market share” I am not sure where that is coming from. According to IDC in “Open Networked Market Share” NetApp is only down 0.5, yes one half of a percent in the past year whereas EMC is down 2% in the same period of time. EMC doesn’t have a CDOT transition, so why are they down 4 x as much as NetApp in the same space? IMO the declines in revenue are due to having to compete with the likes of Nimble and Pure who are selling at a loss, or in the case of Pure this month, giving controllers away for free to gain customers. Net is the statement “During this transition, NetApp has been losing market share” makes it sound like the sky is falling at NetApp. If -0.5% is sky falling at NetApp what is -2% at EMC? Armageddon?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "NetApp has been losing market share,”

      You might want to convince Gartner of that because it's them who made the statements, not Mellor.

      Send them an email or something

      PS. You may want to revisit your IDC numbers and claims.

      http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25883215

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "NetApp has been losing market share,”

        RE: You may want to revisit your IDC numbers and claims. You are correct, agreed, no offense to Chris, as he was quoting Gartner.

        Regarding your link, those are not the charts I am quoting. Those count all disk, like disk inside servers, HBA's etc. which NetApp doesn't have, and disk attached directly to servers and mainframe which NetApp also doesn't have. If you look at the IDC Sept 2014 - Sept. 2015 "Open Networked Market Share – Branded Revenue" which is the chart that shows SAN+NAS where NetApp has products my numbers are from that chart. The key is "Open Networked" as NetApp doesn't sell mainframe storage or non-networked storage. IE: Dell sells 100% more internal and direct attached server disk than NetApp does as NetApp doesn't have a product in that space. That is apples to oranges. When you compare apples to apples “Open Networked Storage = SAN+NAS) NetApp has been #2 behind EMC who is #1 since 2010. NetApp has only lost 0.5% of share and EMC has lost 2% of share in the past 12 months in Open Systems Networked (SAN+NAS) storage. Also the charts you pointed to are not the annual charts, they are the quarterly charts. Since NetApp, EMC, IBM, Dell etc. Have different fiscal calendars and NetApp is weighted towards the government fiscal since that is where they have 50%+ market share, the quarterly charts are misleading as it doesn't tell the whole story over a rolling 12 month fiscal cycle.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "NetApp has been losing market share,”

      Years gone by NetApp world put themselves in a small group of hyper growth companies, google, Amazon etc and brag of " double digit growth" these days we get " it's only a 0.5% decline"

      Market share may be down .05% but revenues are down significantly more.

      Who are you trying to convince that t's okay, the market or yourself?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "NetApp has been losing market share,”

      Your numbers are wrong, when compared to what IDC is saying about NetApp's share.

      Also, with being a public company, you can read into the 10K and 10Q's that the company itself publishes. Not all is well and good with NetApp right now.

      Frankly, although the company I work for sells a lot of different storage products, I can't remember the last time we lost to Netapp. The installed base is loyal, albeit because storage sticks to the data centre floor like superglue, not because the IT folk love it enough to hug it warmly on a weekly basis. They know that for anything other than NAS, there's better value on the market. And as for NAS, you can get good enough elsewhere too.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. FDavids

        Re: "NetApp has been losing market share,”

        RE; "They know that for anything other than NAS, there's better value on the market"

        Interesting statement since 60% of NetApp's install base is SAN, not NAS, and capacity shipped market share actually grew even though revenue market share slipped one half of one percent in the past year. NetApp isn't the little NAS company some perceive it to be SAN share is actually bigger than NAS. The market is heading back to NAS from block anyway, so that plays in NetApp's favor moving forward. NetApp is # 2 in revenue and capacity shipped behind EMC in Networked (SAN+NAS) storage. Bigger than IBM, HP, Dell and Hitachi.

        P.S. My numbers aren't wrong. As stated previously, they came directly from IDC's latest chart.

        1. Bruce Hockin

          Re: "NetApp has been losing market share,”

          "The market is heading back to NAS from block anyway".

          Can you please qualify and substantial this statement. I'm interest how you are arriving at this conclusion.

          My 50k view is that block is growing (30-35% anuually), though not as fast as file (50% annually), however file is moving to private object/public cloud, whereas block is staying just where it is.

  5. ntevanza

    Garter love triangle

    In a magic quadrant of industry analysts, where would Gartner be?

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