back to article Gartner's Magic Quadrant flashes up pure flash array-pusher prize-plucker. It's Pure

Rickety rectangle house Gartner has promoted Pure Storage to the top of the all-flash array pack in its latest Solid-State Array (SSA) Magic Quadrant, and yanked Kaminario into the leaders' quadrant for the first time. Gartner_SSA_MQ_July_2017 Gartner MQ for Solid-stare arrays, July 2017 - click chart to embiggen The first …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yawn

    Pure did not move it seems. They seem to be the leader in losing $$ though..Who the heck is Kaminario?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yawn

      Erm ... DellEMC are currently somewhere around $60BN in debt after the acquisition. Pure have publicly stated they're aiming for profitability by the end of this year.

      "Do the math".

  2. ArrZarr Silver badge
    WTF?

    Based upon this article, I've been given the impression that having an array where you have more options for the type of storage is a bad thing.

    Is that really the case? Wouldn't having the option to put some spinning rust into your array make a provider more attractive?

    1. dinsdale54

      This shows how powerful Gartner are. Several vendors have introduced all flash only variants of systems that could otherwise use spinning disks as well solely to get in to the Gartner report. The customer just ends up with a less flexible system and more pointless part numbers.

    2. Rob Commins

      Rob from Tegile here.

      I completely agree with you ArrZarr

      I've had countless discussions with Gartner on this one. We agree that the SSA and GPDA should merge. Let the Critical Capabilities Report sort out where individual arrays fit in various workloads.

      Economics will resolve this soon, but hang on to your hat - there are other product segments Gartner reports on that I have to imagine will warrant their own MQ. Think Object Storage, Shared Memory Storage, the list goes on.

      Rob

      1. spinning risk

        Critical Capabilities Report- Does Gartner know something noone else does?

        Saw the Critical Capabilities report. One vendor took first place in 3 of the 5 capabilities and second place in the other two; Spoiler.....

        it was not Pure, Hitachi, Netapp or HPe. How did that happen?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    less is more

    no spinning = applicability for an all flash array.

    Dedup and compression only gets you so far with flash drives- for volume, combination of flash, hybrid and massive scalable capacity for warm/cold data is the actual need.

    Pure is still a one-stop shop, albeit with novel technology - and an ability to lose money on every deal they do at the shareholder's expense.

  4. xosevp

    Full Article

    https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-468QQKP&ct=170714

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Gartner MQ is out

    Time for all vendors to issue PRs and celebrate

  6. Lorribot

    Reality?

    Can't remember a magic quadrant that had any basis in reality or at least my own experience of vendors kit. These are mostly a bunch of rubbish. personally i would put EMC in the bottom left, unless ability to execute is the same as sell lots of kit for lots of money to people who believe buying EMC means they won't get fired (any one remember IBM?) and vision means they reuse any old bit of kit lying around that they can give a new name and re-badge and sell to those self same people.

    1. dpk

      Re: Reality?

      This post is hilarious. Your individual experience is better than the analysts ? The fact you want to put Dell EMC in the bottom left tells us all we really need to know.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All that Gartner's magic quadrants really tell you is who has bribed Gartner the most. They are far from independent.

    1. spinning risk
      Thumb Down

      Way wrong!

      Do you think the small companies in the quadrant like Tegile, Tintri, Pure (when it was small), Kaminario and Nimble pay anywhere near what the BIG boys pay? HPe or Dell, as individuals pay more than all the small players combined.FACT. If it was pay for ratings then why are the big vendors not at the top right far right? I do know Gartner does not use Pure at all in there DC for internal consumption yet they are at the top and have been in there for four years.

      1. WYSIWYG650

        Re: Way wrong!

        Pure has no business being top for either leadership or ability to execute. They have no cloud solutions that dont require someone elses tech. Flash Blade is interesting and when it gets a full set of features it will be compelling in a few niche areas but the cost of supporting and engineering your own proprietary hardware will likely be a huge headwind to profitability. What is their marketshare for flash, 3rd or ?, how is that showing ability to execute? the math does not support that, imo.

  8. WYSIWYG650

    Revenue should be the measure for ability to execute

    Does anyone else agree that a real metric like revenue should be used to determine "ability to execute"?

    Correct me if I'm wrong but the proof of your ability to execute is a sale! By this measure, NetApp has a much better ability to execute than Pure.

    Completeness of vision also seems arbitrary...It appears to measure the companies ability to market a value proposition rather than technical capabilities. How many storage vendors OS's can you run in AWS,Azure without a VM? Or what about software defined, how many vendors can run in the cloud like i just said and also on white box in addition to an engineered systems and snap and clone between them? Only NetApp can to my knowledge. Pure is great at talking NVMe all over the place and it is pretty sexy and fast but in reality it is just a faster medium. Very soon Netapp will move from #2 in all flash revenue to #2, I wonder if then it will be in the top leader position...I wont hold my breath.

    1. dpk

      Re: Revenue should be the measure for ability to execute

      The proof of ability to execute might indeed be a sale, but that is not how Gartner defines it for their MQ. The full report quite clearly articulates what they mean by ability to execute - and revenue is not it.

      There are plenty of flash vendors out there that made a sale, but are not executing effectively in the broader market.

      If you want to use revenue as a measure of performance in the market, you might like to hop on over to IDC.

      Also, there are a number of vendors that have a software storage capability that is not limited to their own hardware. NetApp is not unique in that field.

    2. Terry P

      Re: Revenue should be the measure for ability to execute

      "Does anyone else agree that a real metric like revenue should be used to determine "ability to execute"?

      Correct me if I'm wrong but the proof of your ability to execute is a sale! By this measure, NetApp has a much better ability to execute than Pure."

      No. No more than I judge someones ability to drive by the value of their car.

      In fact I find it amazing how some of the vendors are still going, and some really growing, when they don't have the multi billion dollar install base, maintenance, leverage, contacts and portfolio of the larger companies. They are executing.

    3. spinning risk

      Re: Revenue should be the measure for ability to execute

      Careful, Your Netapp is showing. Spoken like a vendor too..

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What are the Pure-knockers are going to cling onto once they start turning a profit, I wonder?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      https://amigobulls.com/stocks/PSTG/income-statement/annual

      FY14 loss 78.56M

      FY15 loss 183.23M

      FY16 loss 213.75M

      FY17 loss 245.06M

      The fact is their loss is larger and larger.

      On what basis you think they'll turning a profit soon?

      1. IanMoore33
        Mushroom

        Winning is losing someone else's money

        Aka - Donnie the Con

  10. IanMoore33
    Mushroom

    still losing money

    All the flash array companies - Pure/Tintri/Nimble/Violin , haven't made a profit yet .

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