Huawei Dominates Critical Storage Platform Capabilities – Router Switch Blog

In an era where data is the new oil, the importance of a robust and efficient storage platform cannot be overstated. Gartner, the globally respected research and advisory firm, has recently unveiled its latest report on key storage platform capabilities, and one name stands out prominently: Huawei. Known for its innovation and technological prowess, Huawei has emerged as a dominant force in the storage solutions market, consistently outperforming its competitors across various critical metrics.Gartner’s report evaluates multiple factors that are crucial for effective storage management, including scalability, performance, data protection, and integration capabilities. What sets Huawei apart, according to Gartner, is its holistic approach to addressing these needs, providing enterprises with versatile and reliable storage solutions that are both future-proof and adaptable to the rapidly changing digital landscape.(Read “Critical Capabilities for Primary Storage Platforms” for additional information)

Online Transaction Processing (OLTP)

Image Source: Gartner

This year, scores will no longer be based on products, but on manufacturers. The picture below shows the situation last year. We see that it is broken down into product series. Maybe it’s because of the change from primary storage to primary storage platform this year. Anyway, now we’re ranking by manufacturer, not product series.

The top three manufacturers are Dell, Hitachi and Huawei, which is more in line with public market feeling. Huawei’s entry into the TOP3 is not bad. The score of Inspur is relatively low, even lower than Zadara, which is a pity.

Virtualization

Virtualization is a very important scenario for primary storage, because the proportion of virtualization in various enterprises is now very high.

The TOP3 are Dell, Huawei and Hitachi. This result is a bit surprising. Huawei surpassed Hitachi and ranked second. Because virtualization mainly has an ecological issue. After all, VMware and Nutanix are still American companies in the field of virtualization. However, in some experts’ judgment, virtualization depends more on SDS (software-defined storage), and Huawei is indeed better at this than Hitachi.

Containers

Now many enterprises are beginning to shift from virtualization to containers, and many new businesses are running on containers. There are also many containers that use main storage, which can provide high-speed and durable container back-end storage.

The ranking in this scenario is quite interesting. The top three are NetApp, Pure Storage and Dell. Huawei Storage is in the middle, which is not particularly ideal. NetApp has invested heavily in containers, Pure Storage mainly acquired Portworx, and Dell has the richest product line after all. The container ecosystem is basically dominated by K8s. Huawei is actually not bad in this area. At least it is better than the virtualization ecosystem.

Application Consolidation

This year, there are several important trends in the field of Application Consolidation. First, cloud integration continues to accelerate, and enterprises are increasingly inclined to migrate applications to the cloud, especially hybrid cloud models. Secondly, microservice architecture is favored, making applications easier to integrate and manage. Artificial intelligence and automation tools are helping analyze and streamline the integration process. In addition, data integration and security have also become key to ensure that the integrated system is efficient and secure. Finally, increased attention is being paid to user experience (UX) design to ensure that integrated applications are easier to use and better meet user needs.

The TOP3 manufacturers are Dell, Hitachi and Huawei, which is the same as the OLTP.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

In VDI scenarios, full flash is now generally used to reduce the impact of boot storms.

Image Source: Gartner

Unexpectedly, Huawei actually won the first place in this scene, followed by Dell and Hitachi. This may be related to Huawei’s own accumulation in VDI, because Huawei has about 200,000 employees, and many R&D personnel are using VDI, so they should have rich experience in this area.

Hybrid Platform Native Services

The hybrid platform native service scenario should also be the most important scenario for Gartner analysts this time. It is the main driving force for renaming primary storage to primary storage platform.

In this scenario, the top three vendors are Pure, NetApp and IBM. Huawei’s ranking is definitely not high, because it fell out of the Leaders Quadrant because of this. In this scene, Tidal Wave is finally not in last place, surpassing Zadara. This is a bit strange, because Zadara was only shortlisted in the Magic Quadrant this year because of its redefinition of the main storage platform. Zadara should be best at this scenario. If Zadara’s score in this scene is so low, I feel like she won’t be in this quadrant in three years.

Year-over-Year Comparison

The weight distribution of last year’s 6 scenarios and 7 critical capabilities is as follows:

Image Source: Gartner

Critical capabilities, multi tenancy and security were renamed to Cyber and Data Resilience, and Operations Management was renamed to Hybrid IT Operations Management. That is to say, the emphasis is on ransomware protection and hybrid cloud operation and maintenance.

Manufacturer’s score

Image Source: Gartner

In terms of performance, Dell and Infinidat scored the highest. Infinidat’s neural network caching algorithm should be a success.

• In terms of storage efficiency, Dell scored the highest, probably due to its recent 5:1 data reduction commitment.
• In terms of RAS durability, Hitachi and Huawei scored the highest. Hitachi has always been the champion in this individual category, and I am also very surprised that Huawei can also take the first place. It seems that foreigners finally believe that the reliability of China’s storage products is no problem and can be ranked first in the world. This is the most important indicator for high-end storage.
• In terms of scalability, Huawei ranks first.
• In terms of ecosystem, NetApp is number one and has been so for many years.
• In terms of cyber and data elasticity, Huawei and IBM tied for first place. I am also surprised by this, ransomware protection and disaster recovery capabilities. It seems that Huawei has quickly caught up with these capabilities.
• In hybrid IT operation and maintenance management, Pure ranks first, which should be closely related to its acquisition of Portworx.

Conclusion

Although Huawei fell out of the Magic Quadrant, it won three championships for its key capabilities, which is the best among all manufacturers, and the reliability of RAS, which is most important for high-end storage, also ranked first. Therefore, I feel that the product capabilities are still highly recognized by Gartner analysts. of. Will Huawei return to the Leaders Quadrant again in the future? It’s really hard to say.

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