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Magic Quadrant for File and Object Storage Platforms

8 October 2024 - ID G00805183 - 38 min read

By Chandra Mukhyala, Julia Palmer, and 1 more

Market demand for a single platform supporting both file and object storage workloads has
led to significant changes in the vendor landscape in this Magic Quadrant. I&O leaders can
use this research to shortlist vendors for unstructured data storage.

Strategic Planning Assumptions

By 2029, over 80% of unstructured data will be deployed on a consolidated storage platform
instead of separate file and object products, up from 40% in early 2024.

By 2029, 60% of I&O leaders will implement edge caching appliances that support global access
of unstructured data from a single repository on-premises or in the cloud, up from 15% in 2024.

By 2029, 100% of storage products will include cyberstorage capabilities focused on active
defense beyond recovery from cyber events, up from 20% in early 2024.

Market Definition/Description
This document was revised on 9 October 2024. The document you are viewing is the corrected
version. For more information, see the Corrections page on gartner.com.

Gartner defines file and object storage platforms as software and/or hardware platforms that
offer object and distributed file system technologies for storing and managing unstructured data
over NFS, SMB and Amazon S3 access protocols.

File and object storage platforms store, secure, protect and scale an organization’s unstructured
data with access over the network using protocols such as NFS, SMB and Amazon S3. Use cases
include analytics, workload consolidation, backup and archiving, hybrid cloud, object-native
applications, cloud IT operations, and high-performance files.

Mandatory Features
The mandatory features for this market include:

A POSIX file system, a flat namespace or a key-value store

Distributed architecture to scale the data store across multiple servers/nodes to linearly scale
performance and capacity with each new node
 Data and metadata that are distributed over multiple nodes in the cluster to handle availability
and data protection in a self-healing manner

Distributed file system that presents a single namespace from capacity pooled across multiple
storage nodes based on shared-nothing or shared-everything architectural principles

Throughput and elastic capacity scaled nondisruptively with the addition or subtraction of each
new node to the cluster

Data access over NFS, SMB and Amazon S3 protocols

Erasure coding or other forms of RAID to protect data from disk or node failures

Snapshot and replication capabilities to protect from data loss

Common Features
The common features for this market include:

Support for a global namespace that can span across storage in multiple geographic locations
at the edge, in on-premises data centers and on public cloud platforms.

Deduplication and compression capabilities for storage efficiency.

Data management services to create metadata classification enabling cost optimization,

governance, mobility, analytics and security.

Cyber resilience or cyberstorage active technologies to identify, protect, detect, respond and
recover from ransomware attacks on unstructured data storage solutions.

Ability to support hybrid cloud use cases such as burst for computing, burst for Capacity, global
data orchestration and storage standardization.

Artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) capabilities that leverage AI and machine
learning. These capabilities enable prescriptive health management, improved customer
support, and support of proactive capacity management, nondisruptive workload simulation,
placement and migration/tiering, and performance optimization.

Storage-as-a-service (STaaS) models with multiple performance tiers for both file and object
storage services.
Magic Quadrant
Figure 1: Magic Quadrant for File and Object Storage Platforms
Vendor Strengths and Cautions

DataCore Software

DataCore Software is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. DataCore Swarm is a software-based
offering, but it is also available as appliances through systems integrators. It is also delivered as a
managed service through cloud service providers. DataCore’s Perifery division is focused on the
edge markets for media and entertainment (M&E), and healthcare workflow archive appliance
solutions based on its Swarm object storage product.

Its operations are geographically diversified, with the majority of its installed base in North
America. Its clients tend to be midsize enterprises with mainly media-centric workflow or large
volumes of digital content. Since the last version of this Magic Quadrant was published, DataCore
has improved workload optimizations for Veeam backup and enhanced Swarm pay-for-use
licensing for cloud service providers (CSPs).

DataCore is best suited for backup and archive storage use cases.

Strengths
 Flexible CSP offerings: S3 protocol standardization on backup and archive applications along
with a flexible SDS hardware configuration make DataCore an ideal solution for CSP and
managed service provider (MSP) provider offerings.

Workflow automation: DataCore helps customers deploy and automate media workflows and
repetitive tasks for the M&E and healthcare industries from its acquisition of Workflow
Intelligence Nexus (WIN).

Energy efficiency: When used in an active archive solution, Swarm’s Darkive adaptive power
consumption feature powers down disks on redundant copies of data to conserve energy.

Cautions
Weak file support: DataCore’s bolt-on fle services are weak, with limited protocol and feature
support, making them less applicable for any file-centric or high-performance workloads.

Limited fleet management: DataCore lacks a global, centralized fleet management dashboard
for multisite operations.

Limited AIOps: DataCore does not offer a consumption-based storage as a service (STaaS),
does not provide a written data efficiency guarantee, and does not monitor capacity usage in
order to optimize storage efficiency.

Dell Technologies

Dell Technologies is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Dell’s portfolio for unstructured data
includes multiple task-specific offerings, including PowerScale for primarily file-centric workloads,
ObjectScale and ECS object storage for primarily object-oriented workloads. Dell PowerScale is a
distributed file system with support for file and object access protocols, and is delivered as an
appliance for on-premises. It is also available as APEX File Storage in Amazon Web Services
(AWS) and Microsoft Azure marketplaces, as well as Dell’s APEX cloud consumption models. Dell
ECS is typically delivered as a hardware appliance for object native use-cases on-premises. Dell
ObjectScale is a software-defined, containerized object-storage offering.

Dell Technologies’ operations and customers are geographically diversified, and its customers
range from small to large enterprises across all industry verticals. Since the last version of this
Magic Quadrant was published, Dell has introduced new PowerScale software improvements and
appliances with improved performance, density and enhanced security compared to previous
versions. Dell also released customer-managed PowerScale in Microsoft Azure and expanded
geoavailability in AWS.

Dell PowerScale is best suited for high-performance file, analytics and backup and archive use
cases.

Strengths
Broad portfolio: Dell has the broadest portfolio of software and hardware offerings in this
market, addressing a wide range of unstructured data workloads with purpose-fit products.
 Global supply chain: Dell is considered a trusted provider, especially in emerging countries that
depend on its global supply chain to provide mission-critical hardware and software support.

AI readiness: Dell’s close technology partnership with NVIDIA and investment in AI projects,
such as Dell Data Lakehouse and DGX SuperPOD certifications, make Dell’s storage
infrastructure a good fit for AI workloads.

Cautions
Global namespace/edge caching: Dell PowerScale lacks certain advanced data management
capabilities, such as global namespace and edge caching, which are required for some global
enterprises’ use cases.

Increased competition: Modern flash storage competitors with distinctive architectures,

features and ease of use are winning over PowerScale on price in large-capacity deals.

ISV partner dependency: Dell depends on independent software vendor (ISV) technology
partners to address specific critical requirements like advanced data management, data
analytics and ransomware detection, which could impact delivery or roadmap of these
technologies.

Hitachi Vantara

Hitachi Vantara is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. The Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) is an
object storage product that can be deployed as a physical appliance, a virtual machine, or a
managed service. HCP scales performance and capacity independently to support a wide range of
workloads.

Hitachi Vantara’s operations are in the Americas, EMEA and Asia/Pacific (APAC). Clients tend to
be Fortune 100, large enterprise to midsize and cloud service providers in financial services,
healthcare and life sciences verticals. Since the last version of this Magic Quadrant was
published, Hitachi Vantara has added a new S32 S Series Node with higher input/output
operations per second (IOPS) performance for small and large objects. Additionally, it has
increased the maximum hard-disk drive (HDD) drive size to 24TB while lowering energy cost per
terabyte through greater density. It has also enhanced both its Ops Center Analyzer viewpoint, the
operational status of Hitachi resources, and its AIOps tool Clear Sight.

HCP is best suited for backup and archive, object-native applications and hybrid cloud use cases.

Strengths
Storage modernization: Hitachi Vantara VSP One Modern Storage Assurance provides clients
with a data platform services program for life cycle management and nondisruptive upgrades.

Sustainability: Hitachi HCP all-flash storage systems improve overall operational sustainability
metrics by providing very low carbon emissions per terabyte over the useful life of the storage.

Comprehensive searches: Hitachi’s Content Intelligence data discovery tool unlocks data
insights that improve operational efficiencies, lowers administration costs and improves
 responsiveness with automated workflows.

Cautions
OEM-dependent performance: Hitachi depends on a third-party partner to provide support for
high-performance computing (HPC) use-case-specific workloads. Additionally, its native file
services are weak compared to leading vendor offerings.

Public cloud absence: HCP is not present in any of the public cloud marketplaces, and as a
result, has minimal to no hybrid cloud support with the major hyperscalers, including AWS,
Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Complex user experience: The complexity of Hitachi Vantara’s documentation requires an

expert to set up, configure and manage their products, potentially leading to operational
disruptions.

Huawei

Huawei is a Challenger in this Magic Quadrant. Huawei offers OceanStor Pacific as a distributed
file system, block and object storage appliance product. OceanStor is available as physical
appliances in different capacity/performance models, as a service in Huawei and Deutsche
Telekom clouds, and as part of Huawei Cloud Stack private cloud. It is also available as part of
Huawei hyperconverged system FusionCube.

The company has large operations in the Asia/Pacific region, with increasing presence in EMEA
and Latin America. Huawei is restricted from selling in North America due to U.S. sanctions. Its
clients tend to be from large to midsize enterprises in the public sector, automotive,
manufacturing and financial services verticals. Since the last version of this Magic Quadrant was
published, OceanStor Pacific has added Multilayer Ransomware Protection, synchronous
replication for object storage, enhanced compression specific to industry vertical applications,
support for Infiniband network and updated all nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) appliances. It
has improved its data management engine (DME) AIOps platform to add metadata operations and
simplify management.

OceanStor Pacific is best suited for analytics, workload consolidation and cloud-native
applications use cases.

Strengths
Unified platform: Huawei’s OceanStor Pacific offers a unified storage platform without add-on
software layers to support multiple use cases.

AI traction: OceanStor Pacific is well-positioned to address the needs of AI infrastructure

buyers, from the performance to data management aspects of AI workloads. Huawei uses
proprietary hardware technology, including chipsets and flash drives, to increase density and
improve cost efficiency.

Customer experience: Gartner clients give OceanStor Pacific high ratings for its customer
support and services experience.
Cautions
U.S. sanctions: U.S. sanctions and the U.S.-China geopolitical situation have created challenges
for Huawei, which in turn affect buyers by limiting global product availability and market
expansion.

Limited cloud support: OceanStor Pacific has limited integration with other hyperscale public
cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform, and as a result, lacks support
for deep hybrid cloud storage integration beyond Huawei Cloud.

Limited SDS flexibility: OceanStor Pacific does not offer flexible software-defined solutions
because it is delivered as an appliance. Its STaaS consumption model is only available as part
of Huawei Cloud Stack offering.

IBM

IBM is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. IBM’s portfolio for unstructured data includes three key
offerings: Storage Scale for high-performance, file-centric workloads; Storage Ceph for unified
block, file and object services with cloud-like operations; and IBM Fusion, an integrated application
platform optimized for OpenShift. IBM Storage Scale is available as software-defined storage, in
the AWS Marketplace, and as an IBM-branded hardware appliance called the Storage Scale
System.

IBM’s operations are geographically diversified, and its clients range from midsize to very large
enterprises across all industry verticals. Since the last version of this Magic Quadrant was
published, IBM has released new models of Storage Scale System with higher performance and
capacity density compared to previous versions. Also, a new capability in Storage Scale called
Data Acceleration Tier, which allows high-performance cache for AI/machine learning (ML) use
cases demanding extreme IOPS. Multiple enhancements were provided for IBM Storage Ceph and
IBM Fusion.

IBM is best suited for analytics, high-performance files, and backup and archiving use cases.

Strengths
AI leadership: IBM’s leadership in the high-performance computing (HPC) market, with its
parallel file system combined with IBM FlashCore Modules and IBM AI ecosystem of software
for AI workloads, establishes it as a leading AI infrastructure provider.

Global namespace: IBM Storage Scale’s active file and object management provides local
read/write performance at the edge, irrespective of the location of the source data — whether in
a data center, cloud or edge locations, including non-IBM storage solutions.

Product innovation: IBM continues to enhance Storage Ceph, which is optimal for customers
looking for an open-source-based unified platform for all types of data (file, block or object).

Cautions
 Portfolio complexity: Customers must carefully navigate the overlapping portfolio of IBM
Storage Scale, IBM Fusion, IBM Cloud Object Storage and IBM Storage Ceph to choose the right
underlying storage product(s) for their use cases.

Lack of cloud support: Storage Scale is not simple to deploy and consume in the public cloud,
limiting its adoption in public cloud and hybrid cloud use cases.

General-purpose file storage: Storage Scale continues to be a HPC and analytics-centric

solution with limited adoption in general-purpose enterprise file use cases.

IEIT SYSTEMS

IEIT SYSTEMS is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant. The IEIT SYSTEMS AS13000 series
provides a unified software solution for both file and object storage. IEIT SYSTEMS offers hybrid
and all flash, software-only (SDS), and appliance models for petabyte-scale applications.

Its operations are focused in Asia/Pacific and EMEA, and its clients tend to be small to very large
enterprises across telecom, government, internet service providers and education institutions.
Since the last version of this Magic Quadrant was published, IEIT SYSTEMS has enhanced
multitenant functionality, including tenant isolation, tenant quotas and quality of service (QoS).
Additionally, it has introduced new video deduplication technology; added support for Network File
System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB) over remote direct memory access (RDMA); and
added NVIDIA GPUDirect Storage support.

IEIT SYSTEMS is best suited for high-performance file, hybrid cloud and object-native applications
use cases.

Strengths
Flash SSD innovation: IEIT SYSTEMS’ unique Quad-level Cell (QLC) NVMe solid-state drive
(SSD) technology enables price, performance, density and power advantages compared to
traditional SSD drives.

Application functionality: IEIT SYSTEMS provides integrated third-party video and image
processing application software on its storage node as an integrated virtual machine
application.

Upgrade flexibility: IEIT SYSTEMS’ data management InView AIOps tool simplifies upgrades
from third-party storage vendors by supplying its own data storage migration capability.

Cautions
Limited growth: IEIT SYSTEMS lacks brand visibility outside of its main region China, making it
challenging for customers to justify its selection over global competitive options.

Lacks advanced SLAs: InfiniStor AIOps functionality is limited in its capabilities to support
advanced platform SLAs, such as cyber protection and recovery.
 Limited edge caching: IEIT SYSTEM has limited support for organizations that depend on
access to centralized data from several edge locations.

Nutanix

Nutanix is a Visionary in this Magic Quadrant. Nutanix Files and Nutanix Objects are integrated
with the Nutanix Cloud Platform to provide a unified storage offering. Nutanix Unified Storage
(NUS) can be deployed in two ways: either across server nodes, utilizing existing Nutanix
hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), or on dedicated storage-only nodes. It can also be
implemented as part of Nutanix Cloud Clusters in AWS or Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS),
extending its deployment capabilities to the edge and the cloud.

Nutanix’s operations are global, relying on server OEM and channel partners for delivery. Nutanix
has customers across all verticals, sizes and geographies. Since the last version of this Magic
Quadrant, Nutanix has added Files Metro Sync for zero recovery point objective (RPO), low
recovery time objective (RTO) replication and improved cyber resilience and data security
governance. Nutanix added a SaaS-based global management portal to manage all Nutanix
instances globally and in the cloud.

NUS is best suited for workload consolidation, hybrid cloud and cloud IT use cases.

Strengths
Enterprise storage platform: Nutanix’s NUS platform enables the consolidation of all customer
storage workloads for the hybrid cloud centralized management.

Simplified operations: NUS offers simplified implementation, maintenance, monitoring and

scalability. This design approach caters to the needs of IT generalists who may not possess
extensive expertise in storage management.

Strong customer experience: Nutanix’s customer support experience is consistently recognized

by Gartner clients for its reliable and prompt responsiveness.

Cautions
Low deployment awareness: As a hyperconverged infrastructure enterprise platform, Nutanix is
typically not considered by buyers looking for storage-only isolated infrastructure solutions.

Limited cloud adoption: Nutanix Files and Object have seen limited adoption in hybrid cloud
deployments because customers have a hard time identifying use cases to effectively utilize
cloud for unstructured data flow.

Low latency: Nutanix is not a good fit for low-latency transactional workloads at large scale. It
does not support network file systems over remote direct memory access.

Pure Storage

Pure Storage is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Pure FlashBlade is a unified file and object
storage appliance. Pure Storage offers a single key-value storage designed to handle large file and
object throughput and parallelism by adding blades to scale capacity and/or performance. All
FlashBlade appliances are available with Pure Storage Evergreen//One for storage as a service.

Pure FlashBlade customers are in all geographies with the majority in North America. Its clients
tend to be midsize to Fortune 100 enterprises across all major verticals. Since the last version of
this Magic Quadrant was published, Pure Storage has improved its usable-to-raw capacity
utilization and reengineered its erasure coding to boost storage efficiency with its DirectFlash
Modules (DFMs). It also has introduced an in-line deep compression algorithm on all FlashBlade
models to maximize data density per terabyte, benefiting read-intensive applications, with
increased DFM capacity to 75TB.

Pure Storage is best suited for analytics, high-performance file and backup, and archiving use
cases.

Strengths
Flash innovation: FlashBlade offers the industry’s highest density and lowest power and carbon
emissions per terabyte using NVMe QLC SSD, at a price point that enables a shift from HDD
hybrid arrays.

IT SLA benefits: Evergreen//One and Pure1 AIOps features and telemetry monitoring provide
clients with advanced SLA capabilities that yield favorable IT operations outcomes.

Hybrid colocation operations: FlashBlade’s partnership with Equinix Metal provides clients with
an effective platform strategy to extend on-premises infrastructure to a global colocation,
thereby increasing capacity or facilitating data center exits.

Cautions
High CapEx: FlashBlade’s capital expenditure (capex)-based Evergreen//Forever support
offering markedly increases the cost of the storage array over the first three years period of the
Evergreen//Forever program.

Limited ransomware detection: FlashBlade has limited native capabilities to detect

ransomware encryption, malware or suspicious behavior, leading to potential operational
issues.

Limited hybrid cloud: FlashBlade can’t be deployed as a virtual machine or a container in AWS,
Azure and GCP, limiting access to public cloud applications and tools.

Qumulo

Qumulo is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Qumulo’s Scale Anywhere platform is a software-
defined offering that is available as a hardware appliance with third-party vendor hardware, and
also in Azure as a Qumulo-managed service. It is a scale-out file system that supports both file
and object workloads. Qumulo is designed for large-scale, high-throughput file workloads with
built-in performance analytics and capacity management.
Most of Qumulo’s customers are in North America. It has customers from small to very large
enterprises across all verticals, with a stronger presence in media and entertainment, healthcare
and life sciences verticals. Since the last version of this Magic Quadrant was published, Qumulo
has released Nexus, a cloud-based portal to monitor and manage all of Qumulo systems from a
single pane of glass. Additional enhancements include Qumulo managed service in AWS in limited
availability, Run Anywhere to support a wider range of commodity hardware vendors, and Azure
Native Qumulo Cold, a cloud-native, managed SaaS solution for storing and retrieving cold file
data.

Qumulo is best suited for high-performance file, workload consolidation and hybrid cloud storage
use cases.

Strengths
Cloud-native: Qumulo in Azure offers SaaS simplicity and cloud elasticity and leverages Azure
Blob for long-term storage, and NVMe for performance and cache.

Scale anywhere: Qumulo’s software provides the same features, performance, scale and ease
of use, whether deployed on-premises on standard x86 servers or in the public cloud.

Global Namespace: Qumulo’s Global Namespace provides local access to remote data from
Qumulo instances spanning on-premises locations and multiple clouds.

Cautions
Lacks ransomware detection: Qumulo lags behind the leaders in this market in offering
comprehensive ransomware detection and high-speed recovery capabilities.

Third-party appliances: Qumulo does not offer its own hardware appliances and is dependent
on server vendor partnerships to bring innovation in flash storage and networking hardware.

Limited global coverage: Qumulo’s lack of in-field support outside of North America and EMEA
is a concern for customers in other regions.

Scality

Scality is a Visionary in this Magic Quadrant. Scality offers RING, an object storage platform with
an integrated POSIX file system, for storing exabyte-scale unstructured data repositories. It runs
as software on commodity hardware and includes tools to deliver storage as a service.

Scality’s operations are focused in North America, EMEA and Asia/Pacific, across all verticals. Its
customers are primarily large-scale enterprise IT, government agencies and cloud service
providers, addressing issues of massive data growth and data distribution/silos.

Since the last version of this Magic Quadrant was published, Scality has delivered metadata
performance and efficiency enhancements for very large buckets to address data lake and large-
scale backup repository use cases. Other enhancements include Active-Active S3 replication,
VMware vCloud director integration and a security-hardened operating system.
Scality is well-suited for backup and archiving, object-native apps, and data lakes for analytics use
cases.

Strengths
Exabyte scale: Scality’s RING architecture supports exabyte size deployments, scaling in
multiple dimensions, and independent scaling of performance and capacity.

Software flexibility: Scality appeals to prospects seeking software-only solutions that are
capable of running on a wide range of industry-standard hardware, both at the edge and in the
data center.

Strong reliability: RING has advanced data protection capabilities, supporting geographically
distributed storage across multiple data availability zones and achieving zero RPO/RTO, 100%
availability and 14 nines of durability.

Cautions
External providers reliance: Similar to other software-defined products, users must engage with
vendor channel partners and OEMs to acquire comprehensive infrastructure solutions and
access capabilities delivered as a service.

Turnkey appliances: Scality does not offer a turnkey appliance delivery model, leaving
customers to deploy the solution on their own or, more commonly, with assistance from one of
Scality’s services partners.

Light files only: Scality is an object-storage-centric offering with an integrated POSIX file
system, but it is not designed for traditional file-heavy data manipulation workloads, such as
HPC or simulation-type workloads.

VAST Data

VAST Data is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. VAST is a unified distributed file system and object
storage software platform that has been designed for large-scale multiprotocol deployments
targeted at high-performance workloads. VAST achieves higher scalability, reduced latency and
improved global efficiency by connecting its front-end stateless protocol nodes and persistent all-
flash NVMe QLC media enclosures through NVMe over fabric (NVMe-oF) protocols.

Its operations have been mostly focused in North America, with some recent expansion in EMEA.
Its customers tend to be service providers or large enterprises that target data-intensive
applications. Since the last version of this Magic Quadrant, the vendor has added global
namespace capabilities, metadata compression, a multicluster manager and QoS.

VAST Data is best suited for AI/ML analytics, life sciences and other large-scale, performance-
sensitive use cases.

Strengths
Market traction: VAST’s strategic partnerships, marketing initiatives and sales campaigns have
resulted in an increasing number of large customers, which in turn has had a positive impact on
 product improvements.
Efficiency at scale: VAST’s implementation of low-latency storage using cost-effective QLC
flash, advanced data reduction algorithms and high rack density deliver cost-efficiency and high
performance for large-scale deployments.

Customer experience: VAST end users recognize the outstanding support, extensive knowledge
and assistance they receive during the presales, architecture, ordering and deployment phases.

Cautions
Limited appliance strategy: VAST’s lack of branded, integrated and supported appliance
offerings limits its consideration by risk-averse global organizations that prioritize long-term
hardware and software solution support and prefer appliance-based infrastructure delivery
worldwide.

Frequent updates: Gartner clients cite concern with high-frequency software releases, as they
pose challenges in ensuring stability in production environments.

Lacks features: The VAST Data Platform lacks enterprise features like synchronous replication,
stretched cluster, geodistributed erasure coding and active cyber defense. In addition, it has
limited traction for hybrid cloud deployment for production customers.

WEKA

WEKA is a Visionary in this Magic Quadrant. The WEKA Data Platform provides a unified software-
defined file and object storage platform that can be deployed on-premises through OEM server
partners, in the public cloud, or in hybrid cloud configurations. The WEKA Data Platform provides
an NVMe-based, I/O-intensive, low-latency parallel file system that can also extend to object
storage in a single namespace. WEKA also offers a proprietary parallel file system client for
extreme throughput file workloads and supports NFS and SMB, and S3 access. The WEKA Data
Platform can also be deployed in a converged mode, where the compute for the application and
the underlying storage are running on the same server.

WEKA operates in North America, APAC and EMEA. Its customers are mainly large enterprises
across all industries, using it for HPC or analytics workloads. Since the last version of this Magic
Quadrant, WEKA has added support for nondisruptive upgrades, Advanced RISC Machine (ARM)
support, converged mode for cloud, and automated cluster-wide installation are key features.

The WEKA Data Platform is well-suited for analytics, high-performance file and hybrid cloud use
cases.

Strengths
Parallel file system: The WEKA Data Platform is a modern parallel file system suitable for the
most demanding and large-scale HPC and enterprise AI workloads, where standard NFS access
does not meet throughput requirements.

WEKA converged mode: WEKA Converged mode allows its file system to run alongside
applications on the same servers to reduce compute costs and increase graphics processing
 unit (GPU) utilization.
Hybrid cloud: The WEKA Data platform is broadly available in AWS, Azure, Google Cloud
Platform and Oracle public clouds to address hybrid cloud storage use cases and deliver high-
performance file services.

Cautions
Specialized storage: WEKA’s solutions are not cost-effective for backup and archiving, and lack
the necessary integrations and certifications to be deployed as an application storage
repository.

Limited S3 protocol and object storage support: WEKA supports S3 protocol access and can
integrate with an external object storage to extend its namespace, but its support for full S3
protocol and object storage is limited.

Limited functionality: The WEKA Data Platform lacks some general-purpose features, such as
native cyber resilience and advanced ransomware protection, AI-based operations,
synchronous replication, data efficiency guarantees, advanced S3 APIs, and geodistributed
object storage.

Vendors Added and Dropped

We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants as markets change. As a result of
these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant may change over time. A vendor's
appearance in a Magic Quadrant one year and not the next does not necessarily indicate that we
have changed our opinion of that vendor. It may be a reflection of a change in the market and,
therefore, changed evaluation criteria, or of a change of focus by that vendor.

Added
No vendors were added to this Magic Quadrant.

Dropped
Cloudian was dropped for not meeting the 2024 inclusion criteria of a single platform for file
and object workloads.

DDN was dropped for not meeting the 2024 inclusion criteria of a single platform for file and
object workloads.

NetApp was dropped for not meeting the 2024 inclusion criteria of a single platform for file and
object workloads.

Quantum was dropped for not meeting the 2024 inclusion criteria of a single platform for file
and object workloads.
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
To qualify for inclusion, vendors must meet all of the following requirements:
 Revenue: Above $75 million of recognized platform revenue (single offering not multiple
products) between 15 June 2023 and 15 June 2024.

Customers: Should have at least 150 active production customers, each consuming more than
500TB raw capacity through either distributed file or object storage protocols only. Vendors
must provide a signed letter from the CFO or equivalent leader for the business attesting the
financials and customers to support this requirement.

The platform must be in production use in at least three (out of four) major geographies.
Vendors must provide evidence of a minimum of 25 production customers brought to revenue
in each of the four geographies (North America, EMEA, Asia/Pacific and South America). This
requires proof in the form of a confidential list of representative customers from a diverse
geography (25 customers of at least 500TB each in each of four geographies).

The platform should be deployed and active in production across at least five out of the seven
use cases that are outlined in Critical Capabilities for File and Object Storage Platforms.
Vendors must provide reference materials to support this criterion.

The platform must be designed for primarily on-premises workloads and not as a pass-through
solution where data will be permanently stored elsewhere.

The vendor should own the storage software intellectual property and be the platform
developer. If a platform is built on top of open-source software, the vendor must be one of the
top 10 active contributors to the community (in terms of code contribution over the last 12
months).

Vendors should not rely on third-party software for the filesystem, object store or the underlying
key-value store to be commercially usable in a production environment.

The vendor must have a platform that includes features and capabilities generally available
before 15 June 2024 that meet the following criteria:

Packaging:

Platform must be sold as either an appliance or software-based storage solution.

Platform must be available for purchase and consumed as a stand-alone file and/or object
service and not as part of an integrated, converged or hyperconverged system with compute
and hypervisor bundle.

Platform capabilities:

Platform must support NFS and SMB and S3 access protocols. The protocol support must be
native to the platform, not through a gateway or external product.
 Platform must have a fully distributed architecture (see note below), where data and metadata
are distributed, replicated or erased coded over the network across multiple nodes in the
cluster.

Platform must have the ability to handle disk, enclosure or node failures in a graceful manner
without impacting availability.

Single file system capable of expanding beyond 500TB.

Global namespace capable of 2PB expansion.

Cluster must span more than four nodes.

Support for horizontal scaling of capacity and throughput by node additions in a single
namespace/file system.

Note: A fully distributed architecture is a distributed computing architecture in which each node is
independent and self-sufficient, and there is no single point of contention across the system. More
specifically, none of the nodes share memory or disk storage. People typically contrast distributed
design systems with systems that keep a large amount of centrally stored state information,
whether in a database, an application or metadata server, or any other similar single point of
contention.
Evaluation Criteria
Ability to Execute
We analyze the vendor’s capabilities across broad business functions. Ability to Execute reflects
the market conditions and, to a large degree, it is our analysis and interpretation of what we hear
from the market. Gartner analysts evaluate vendors on the quality and efficacy of the processes,
systems, methods and procedures that enable IT provider performance to be competitive, efficient
and effective, thereby positively impacting revenue, retention and reputation within Gartner’s view
of the market.

Table 1: Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Product or Service High

Overall Viability High

Sales Execution/Pricing Medium

 Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Market Responsiveness/Record High

Marketing Execution Low

Customer Experience High

Operations Low

Source: Gartner (October 2024)

Completeness of Vision
Completeness of Vision distills a vendor’s view of the future, the direction of the market and the
vendor’s role in shaping that market. We expect the vendor’s vision to be compatible with our view
of the market’s evolution. A vendor’s vision of the evolution of the data center and the expanding
role of distributed file and object storage are critical criteria. In contrast with how we measure
Ability to Execute, the rating for Completeness of Vision is based on direct vendor interactions and
Gartner’s analysis of the vendor’s view of the future.

Table 2: Completeness of Vision Criteria

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Market Understanding High

Marketing Strategy Medium

Sales Strategy High

Offering (Product) Strategy High

 Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Business Model Medium

Vertical/Industry Strategy Medium

Innovation High

Geographic Strategy Medium

Source: Gartner (October 2024)

Quadrant Descriptions

Leaders
Leaders provide mature offerings that meet market demand and have demonstrated the vision
necessary to sustain their market position as requirements evolve. The hallmark of Leaders is that
they focus on and invest in their offerings to the point where they lead the market and can affect
its overall direction. As a result, Leaders can become the vendors to watch as you try to
understand how new market offerings might evolve.

Leaders typically possess a large, satisfied customer base (relative to the size of the market) and
enjoy high visibility within the market. Their size and financial strength enable them to remain
viable in a challenging economy. Leaders typically respond to a wide market audience by
supporting broad market requirements.

Challengers
Challengers have a strong Ability to Execute but may not have a plan that will maintain a strong
value proposition for new customers. Larger vendors in mature markets may be positioned as
Challengers because they choose to minimize risk or avoid disrupting their customers or their own
activities.

Although Challengers typically have significant size and financial resources, they may lack strong
vision, innovation or an overall understanding of market needs. Challengers may offer products
nearing the end of their lives that dominate a large but shrinking segment.

Challengers can become Leaders if their vision develops. Over time, large companies may
fluctuate between the Challengers and Leaders quadrants as their product cycles and market
needs shift.

Visionaries
Visionaries align with Gartner’s view of how a market will evolve, but their ability to deliver against
that vision is less proven. In growing markets, this status is typical. In more mature markets, it
may reflect a competitive strategy for a smaller vendor — such as selling an innovation ahead of
mainstream demand — or a larger vendor trying to break out of a rut or differentiate itself.

For vendors and customers, Visionaries fall into the higher-risk, higher-reward category. They
often introduce new technologies, services or business models, and they may need to build
financial strength, service and support, and sales and distribution channels. Whether Visionaries
become Challengers or Leaders may depend on customers accepting new technologies or the
vendor’s ability to develop partnerships that complement its strengths. Visionaries are sometimes
attractive acquisition targets for Leaders or Challengers.

Niche Players
Niche Players do well in a single segment of a market, or have a limited ability to innovate or
outperform other vendors in the wider market. This may be because they focus on a particular
functionality or geographic region, or because they are new entrants to the market. Alternatively,
they may be struggling to remain relevant in a market that is moving away from them. Niche
Players may have reasonably broad functionality, but with limited implementation and support
capabilities and relatively limited customer bases. Compared to vendors in other quadrants, they
do not demonstrate a strong vision for their offerings.

For end users, assessing Niche Players is more challenging than assessing vendors in other
quadrants. Some could make progress, while others do not execute well and may not have the
vision and means to keep pace with broader market demands.

A Niche Player may be a perfect fit for your specific requirements. However, if it goes against the
direction of the market — even if you like what it offers — then it may be a risky choice because its
long-term viability will be threatened.
Context
The challenges with managing unstructured data are expanding from scale, performance or
availability to include cyber resilience, data management, hybrid cloud, single platform for file and
object workloads and storage as a service. The ability to scale to a large number of objects and to
scale for high throughput are critical, as are simplicity of operations, global presence and cyber
resilience. Large organizations are more concerned with making sense of the massive amounts of
data they are storing and protecting than with other challenges.

To address these challenges, vendors have responded with a number of new capabilities and
partnerships. Increasingly, vendors are offering a single platform to manage all of the
unstructured data in an organization. A single platform could be as basic as offering an AWS S3
interface on top of a distributed file storage system, or it could be a truly unified key-value store
providing both file and object services. Object storage systems offering a file interface are not
suitable for addressing file-intensive workloads, but are good solutions for mostly read-only data,
such as backups or image repositories across all industries.

Vendors are providing new indexing and cataloging tools that include the ability to add custom
metadata, which makes data easier to search and find. Few vendors are tackling the problem of
accessing data stored in a centralized location from a large number of remote locations. For cyber
resilience, vendors are expanding capabilities from restoring data to detecting ransomware and
identifying the point in time of data compromise.

To reduce the burden of managing storage, vendors are offering storage as a service on their own
or in partnerships with CSPs. Most vendors now offer their file storage in the public cloud to
address gaps in the native public cloud file services but also to create a hybrid cloud environment.
Market Overview
The market for unstructured data has been slowly converging from separate file and object
products to a single platform that can support all unstructured data workloads. In 2024, there are
more vendors supporting a single platform as opposed to separate products. The shift from
product to platform is more than supporting all unstructured data workloads. It is also about
integrated capabilities to provide cyber resilience, global namespace and file systems and storage
as a service.

The following capabilities are the top priorities for I&O leaders responsible for purchasing and
operating infrastructure for unstructured data storage. These capabilities significantly contributed
to vendor positions in this Magic Quadrant report:

Single platform to handle all unstructured data workloads: File or object access, large or small
files, sequential or random workloads, throughput heavy or latency sensitive, high performance
and long-term retention.

Hybrid cloud support: Data management across on-premises, public clouds and edge
locations. Key use cases include burst for compute, burst for capacity, storage standardization,
and backup and disaster recovery.

Ability to detect cyberattacks (both known ones and Day 0 attacks): Recovery and protection
are equally important and are standard capabilities. Detection is where some vendors do more
than others.

STaaS capabilities: Vendor-managed infrastructure with consumption-based pricing and AIOps

to deliver storage-as-a-service with cloud-like elasticity.

Data management: Ability to extract insights for speeding up analytics workflows and for life
cycle management. This is typically powered by building metadata index and file or object
labeling/tagging capabilities.

Edge caching and global namespace: Ability to read/write data files from any location to a
centralized storage pool.
 AI and GenAI readiness: ISV integrations, NVIDIA certification and partnerships, and data
management and performance capabilities to support AI.

Single platform: Handles both high-performance and data lake workloads.

Platform efficiency: Performance, space and power efficiency. This is important because it
translates to improved sustainability.

Software-defined storage: Allows vendors to offer the same storage anywhere — on-premises,
edge locations or in the public cloud. It also enables enterprises to deploy the storage on their
preferred server and networking hardware to take advantage of the latest innovations.
Evidence
Placement in the Magic Quadrant for File and Object Storage Platforms is based on Gartner’s view
of a vendor’s performance against the criteria noted in this research. Gartner’s view on vendor
placement in the Magic Quadrant is heavily influenced by more than 1,000 inquiries and one-on-
one meetings with Gartner clients regarding object storage and distributed file system solutions.
These interactions have been conducted since the publication of the last iteration of this Magic
Quadrant. Gartner also utilizes worldwide end-user surveys, Gartner conference session polling
data, Gartner Research Circle polls and Gartner Peer Insights. The included vendors submitted
comprehensive responses to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant survey on this topic. Vendors’ responses
were used as the basis for subsequent vendor briefings and follow-up meetings, product
demonstrations, and correspondence.

Additionally, this research drew input from other Gartner analysts, industry contacts and public
sources, such as U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings, articles, speeches, published
papers and public domain videos.

Evaluation Criteria Definitions

Ability to Execute
Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor for the defined market. This
includes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills and so on, whether
offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the market definition and
detailed in the subcriteria.

Overall Viability: Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial health, the
financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood that the individual business
unit will continue investing in the product, will continue offering the product and will advance the
state of the art within the organization's portfolio of products.

Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities in all presales activities and the structure that
supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, presales support, and the
overall effectiveness of the sales channel.
Market Responsiveness/Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve
competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and
market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's history of responsiveness.

Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to deliver
the organization's message to influence the market, promote the brand and business, increase
awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with the product/brand and
organization in the minds of buyers. This "mind share" can be driven by a combination of publicity,
promotional initiatives, thought leadership, word of mouth and sales activities.

Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients to be

successful with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways customers receive
technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary tools, customer support
programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups, service-level agreements and so on.

Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include
the quality of the organizational structure, including skills, experiences, programs, systems and
other vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing
basis.

Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers' wants and needs and to
translate those into products and services. Vendors that show the highest degree of vision listen
to and understand buyers' wants and needs, and can shape or enhance those with their added
vision.

Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated

throughout the organization and externalized through the website, advertising, customer
programs and positioning statements.

Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of direct and
indirect sales, marketing, service, and communication affiliates that extend the scope and depth
of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base.

Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approach to product development and delivery that
emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature sets as they map to current
and future requirements.

Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor's underlying business proposition.

Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet
the specific needs of individual market segments, including vertical markets.

Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or

capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes.
 Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the
specific needs of geographies outside the "home" or native geography, either directly or through
partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that geography and market.

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