META Group today announced the availability of its newest METAspectrum market evaluation for the enterprise network-attached storage (NAS) market.
NAS devices connect to a network that is typically an Ethernet (TCP/IP) local-area network and are controlled by specialised operating systems. NAS devices are designed primarily for file serving and file sharing among clients/workstations and servers. This market is mostly consolidated and is rapidly becoming mature in terms of market leadership and degree of dynamics. META Group predicts the NAS market will continue to consolidate through 2006/07.
"There are clear leaders, distant challengers, and distant followers in the enterprise network-attached storage market," says Eion Gibson, strategic advisor META Group. "IT organisations must decide what business problems they are trying to solve and select vendors based on a holistic evaluation, particularly for strategic acquisitions."
The NAS market grew modestly in 2002, largely due to the global economic climate and because most spending went to storage-area network (SAN) solutions.
Key findings and guidance
The Enterprise NAS METAspectrum evaluates six companies. Network Appliance and EMC are the clear leaders, while IBM and HP are distant challengers, and Veritas and Auspex are distant followers.
The analysis found:
* Multiple types of storage services, and consequently different storage architectures, are required for applications within the enterprise IT portfolio.
* Vendors will need to broaden storage solutions and move to shared storage (SAN and NAS).
* IT organisations should evaluate NAS vendors based on a mix of performance and presence - however, current weightings will shift through 2003/04.
* Allocation for NAS storage will typically not be as critical as other networked storage, and will be less pervasive as part of the core and non-discretionary budget.
* There will always be a portion of servers within the total networked storage market that use internal storage and do not consume a networked storage service.
* Leaders have a well-balanced score across performance and presence criteria - it is more difficult to consistently score well in the enterprise NAS market than in other targeted or niche NAS markets.
* Challengers have conceded the development of a file system and optimised operating system to Microsoft - excluding the use of a general-purpose OS and server hardware. Each vendor in the challenger category has enabled Microsoft`s Intel-based Server Appliance Kit (SAK) to participate with enterprise storage that may or may not be connected to a block-based network.
* Both followers have their strengths but either lack in presence or are distant followers overall. META Group does not expect either follower to alter its position in the enterprise NAS market and become a challenger in the near-term.
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METAspectrum evaluations from META Group provide IT professionals with a view into critical market success factors and vendor positioning. METAspectrum, in combination with META Group`s SPEX modules - which provide detailed technical analysis of product features and capabilities - delivers comprehensive evaluations of both technology markets and vendor product offerings. METAspectrum evaluations are a standard component of a META Group retainer service subscription and are updated periodically, depending on the characteristics of individual markets.
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