IGG-04302003-04 A. Couture, R. Passmore Article 30 April 2003 CIO Update: Gartner s Storage Services Magic Quadrant Gartner has developed its first North American Storage Services Magic Quadrant. Storage service providers are evaluated based on their ability to execute storage services and their vision for evolving them. CIOs and many other executives are interested in getting information to help them evaluate technology vendors and their products. Therefore, Gartner has developed its first North American Storage Services Magic Quadrant. Storage service providers are evaluated based on their ability to execute storage services and their vision for evolving them. Evaluation of 11 Vendors Gartner has developed its first North American Storage Services Magic Quadrant (see Figure 5). The following 11 storage service providers were evaluated in the Magic Quadrant: Arsenal Digital Solutions Computer Network Technology Computer Sciences Corporation Dell Computer Electronic Data Systems EMC Hewlett-Packard Hitachi Data Systems IBM Storage Technology Sun Microsystems Gartner Entire contents 2003 Gartner, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.
Figure 5 North American Storage Services Magic Quadrant Challengers Leaders Ability to Execute CSC Dell HDS Arsenal Sun IBM HP EDS EMC StorageTek CNT Niche Players Completeness of Vision Vendors: Arsenal Digital Solutions Computer Network Technology (CNT) Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) Dell Computer Electronic Data Systems (EDS) EMC Source: Gartner Research As of April 2003 Visionaries Hewlett-Packard (HP) Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) IBM Storage Technology (StorageTek) Sun Microsystems The vendors in Figure 5 range from hardware manufacturers and independent software vendors to large outsourcers and storage service providers. Obviously, not all of these vendors provide the same breadth and depth of storage services, and some are very specialized in the services they provide. However, the vendors are representative of the range of storage services available today and are evaluated within this larger context. The evaluation criteria used in this Magic Quadrant focus on companies located in North America. Leaders Leaders are performing well today, maintain a clear vision of market direction and are actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market. The large service providers demonstrated significant experience and understanding of the dynamics needed to successfully deliver storage services. They understand customer needs and have developed a clear road map to meet them. Also, the large service providers are investing in the tools and technologies needed to execute their visions. The following vendors are considered leaders in the Storage Services Magic Quadrant:
Electronic Data Systems (EDS) Most of EDS storage-related revenue is primarily derived from management services, including managed hosting and traditional outsourcing. Only a fraction of North American storage service revenue comes from consulting and implementation services. EDS is committed to an on-demand infrastructure that enables usage-based pricing for systems, communications and storage. To this end, EDS has invested heavily in storage networking and has implemented an impressive set of management and automation tools, including those from Ejasent, OpsWare and StorageNetworks. EDS integrates data from these tools into a customer dashboard to report on service-level agreement performance and monitor customer satisfaction. Recent bankruptcies among top EDS accounts (US Airways and WorldCom), coupled with a new executive management team, could impact EDS s storage services vision and the company s ability to execute that vision. EMC EMC is the leader in the redundant array of independent disks (RAID) market. This market position has led EMC to build an extensive services customer base. EMC increased its investment and focus on professional services by establishing specialized storage practices dedicated to networked storage, storage software and business continuity. Through an alliance with Accenture, EMC is in the process of expanding its capabilities to include consulting services aimed at storage management best practices for multivendor environments. Although progress has been made, some of these new services are still being defined and true on-demand pricing is not available. Until recently, EMC provided one high level of service response times for all customers and products. With the introduction of the CX200 and Centera, the company began offering tiered product support on selected products. EMC has a service philosophy of owning the customer problem, even if it stems from another vendor s product. As a consequence, EMC customer satisfaction for hardware and software support is extremely high. EMC was the only service provider to report that its service best practices are independently audited. Hewlett-Packard (HP) The integration of Compaq into HP added Compaq s extensive multivendor product support capabilities to HP s storage professional services capabilities, resulting in a very extensive storage service portfolio, including managed hosting and outsourcing. However, HP continues to struggle with the post-merger integration of storage lines and storage services. HP is moving to on-demand capabilities, including on-demand storage. HP is also investing extensively in storage management and automation technologies. Although the company s storage services vision is strong, it sometimes gets lost in multiple HP product families architectures and initiatives. IBM The global support capabilities of Information Technology Solutions, coupled with the business process consulting capabilities through the PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting acquisition, mean IBM now offers a broader range of services than any of its competitors. Although IBM does not have a separate storage services business, its storage services initiatives are integrated with its broader set of IT services to enable on demand business models through outsourcing, managed hosting or customer-enabled solutions. The IBM services business model allows IBM to leverage other service practices to provide networking and solutions using its storage services capabilities. IBM s storage and storage service visions are tightly coupled with the company s e-business on demand initiatives. To make this vision a reality, the company is investing heavily in on demand services, including storage services and developing or acquiring new tools and technologies to meet this strategy.
Storage Technology (StorageTek) StorageTek has been a quiet giant among storage service providers. Even though the company generated $764 million in storage service revenue in 2002, its leadership role in storage services is not always recognized because 90 percent of service revenue is related to product support services, including maintenance services for servers and mainframes. StorageTek tape products coexist with disk devices from all vendors and the company has built an extensive portfolio of multivendor product services. StorageTek claims vendor neutrality outside of its own product line. Recently, the company put an emphasis on storage professional services and remote storage monitoring and management through a remote storage operations center acquired from Storability. Visionaries Visionaries have a clear vision of market direction and are focused on preparing for that, but they still can improve in terms of optimizing service delivery. The following companies are considered visionaries in the Storage Services Magic Quadrant: Computer Network Technology (CNT) CNT is a relatively small (just a little over 700 employees) vendor of storage hardware, solutions and services. Products are sold worldwide, but services are delivered primarily in the United States and through the U.K. subsidiary BI-Tech. CNT s specialty is high-end long-distance storage networking for business continuity. A significant portion of the company s consulting, implementation and management services are linked to supporting its own long-distance storage networking products and tools. CNT also offers services focused on backup and recovery, and storage and storage area network (SAN) infrastructure. IBM, EMC and StorageTek call for CNT when customers require long-distance storage networking. CNT shares a vision of remote storage management and automation and has invested heavily in tools to automate processes such as infrastructure assessments, long-distance migrations, service delivery and remote backup management. In April 2003, CNT announced the acquisition of Inrange. Although implications of the acquisition are primarily hardware related, it also has the potential to add depth and breadth to CNT s ability to execute its storage service vision. Sun Microsystems Sun has articulated and is investing heavily in an on-demand infrastructure (N1) strategy. In 2002, the company acquired Terraspring and Pirus Networks to enable the compute and storage aspects of its on-demand capabilities. Sun does not deliver managed hosting services or traditional outsourcing. A recent reorganization of Sun s service division places more emphasis on the corporate value of service and support than it had in the past. A reseller partnership with Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) provided Sun with a high-end storage solution well-suited to storage area network environments. Although HDS initially provided delivered professional and support services for these products, Sun is now delivering much of that support directly or through partnerships. Sun clearly has more to do in developing and delivering storage professional services, but it is well-positioned to move quickly into the Leaders Quadrant. Challengers Challengers execute well, but have a less-defined view of market direction and, therefore, may not be aggressive in preparing for the future. The following companies are considered challengers in the Storage Services Magic Quadrant: Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) CSC is a worldwide full-service outsourcer with few storage services delivered outside the scope of an outsourcing engagement. Gartner Dataquest
estimates that 2001 storage service revenue was around $1.3 billion. CSC is extremely capable in heterogeneous service and support. As an outsourcing and managed service provider, CSC understands the benefits of effective storage management including virtualization, storage security, policy-based management and storage on-demand alternatives, and has future initiatives in these areas. However, the company has not been as aggressive as some of its competitors in implementing automation and management tools and technologies. Dell Computer Dell became serious about storage and storage services when it signed a cobranding deal with EMC. Since that time, Dell has become EMC s top reseller and has grown its storage service capabilities, particularly in the area of professional services. In 2002, Dell increased its storage service revenue nearly twofold. Although Dell imitated some of EMC s support strategies, for the most part the company is putting its own mark on services. For example, customers can upgrade warranties and Dell has created a variety of low-cost storage networking packages that include service. Dell s storage service vision is purely related to driving down costs through standardized and repeatable services. The company has no intention of offering on-demand services. HDS HDS has a goal of increasing the percentage of the company s bottom line derived from software and services. Until recently, HDS s service focus was on product support. An agreement with Sun Microsystems to resell high-end HDS arrays opened the door to a great many service opportunities to architect and implement SANs in Sun environments. More recently, Sun has been building its own service capabilities in these areas. Last year, HDS hired Ken Beaudry as executive vice president of professional services to develop and deploy heterogeneous consulting, implementation and support capabilities delivered directly and through channel partners. These programs are still in development. Niche Players Niche players focus on a particular segment of the client base, as defined by characteristics such as size and project complexity. Their ability to outperform or be innovative may be affected by this narrow focus. Niche players concentrate on particular market segments and often only support applications that apply to those targeted segments. The following company is considered a niche player in the Storage Services Magic Quadrant: Arsenal Arsenal is one of the few survivors of the storage service provider era. The company s original vision was that backup and recovery services would be more compelling than ondemand primary disk storage. Also, its original execution strategy involved exclusive partnerships with large stable Internet data centers. Arsenal s vision and execution proved to be right on target. The company s investment in automation and management technologies has dramatically reduced overhead costs. Arsenal hopes to leverage these technologies to deliver storage management services directly to customer-owned data centers. The company s limited geographic and market focus and dependence on capital funding weighed heavily in placing the company in the Niche Players Quadrant. Bottom Line Gartner s Storage Services Magic Quadrant is a useful starting point to identify and evaluate storage services provided by a variety of vendors.
Selection should be based on a detailed evaluation of an enterprise s storage needs and objectives in comparison with a service provider s capacity to fulfill those requirements and expectations. Just because a service provider falls into the Leaders Quadrant, it is not automatically the right choice. Similarly, companies that automatically eliminate niche players from consideration could be missing great prices from a service provider willing to lavish them with attention. All vendors ranked in this Magic Quadrant provide quality services in their respective areas. Therefore, enterprises must determine which storage service provider (or providers) can best address their particular requirements. Written by Edward Younker, Research Products Analytical sources: Adam Couture and Robert Passmore, Gartner Research For related Inside Gartner articles, see: CIO Update: What You Should Know About IBM s Storage Management Strategy and Road Map, (IGG-07102002-01) CIO Update: Sun Makes Strides as a Network Storage Vendor, (IGG-03202002-03)