Magic Quadrant for Midrange and High-End Modular Disk Arrays

G00219289 Magic Quadrant for Midrange and High-End Modular Disk Arrays Published: 17 November 2011 Analyst(s): Roger W. Cox, Pushan Rinnen, Stanley Zaffos, Jimmie Chang Manifested by vendor acquisitions and coupled with new product releases, the midrange and high-end modular disk array market offers more end users a broader range of competitive choices than was previously available. What You Need to Know This Magic Quadrant represents vendors that sell into the end-user market with branded midrange and high-end modular disk array storage systems that support block-access protocols. Despite rather gloomy macroeconomic conditions worldwide and ongoing geopolitical unrest in the Middle East, the midrange and high-end modular disk array storage market grew 8.2% from 3Q10 through 2Q11, compared with the same period the year before. Propelled by technological innovation and enhanced scalability, this continued growth in vendor revenue supports the observation that IT executives are willing to invest in modern midrange and high-end modular disk storage systems to improve operational efficiency, to support deployments of virtualized IT infrastructures, and to address the impact of unabated terabyte growth. The midrange and high-end modular disk array market is fragmented. End users have many alternative vendors from which to choose. The 2011 Magic Quadrant for Midrange and High-End Modular Disk Arrays includes 15 vendors. However, there are many other vendors that have yet to meet the qualification criteria to be included in this Magic Quadrant. The period-over-period vendor revenue change for the eight vendors is included in the Gartner "Quarterly Statistics: Disk Array Storage, All Regions, 2Q11 Update" report along with the size of the market served by smaller vendors. Reflecting the importance of midrange and high-end modular disk storage, this segment of the external controller-based (ECB) disk storage market experienced a very high rate of M&A activity and product introductions since the last Magic Quadrant was published in November 2010. HP bought 3PAR; Dell acquired Compellent; and Oracle purchased Pillar Data. In addition, IBM launched its Storwize V7000 and EMC announced its much-anticipated VNX family. All of these actions materially improved the competitive position of these companies. 3PAR is now HP's lead midrange to high-end modular disk storage system, replacing the position previously held by the aged EVA. Dell has positioned the Compellent Storage Center platform as its center piece offering, displacing the co-branded Dell:EMC CLARiiON CX4 series. Oracle has made the Pillar Axiom 600 its premium block-access midrange and high-end modular disk storage system offering. IBM is

addressing new midrange and high-end modular disk storage opportunities with the Storwize V7000 and the XIV Gen3 Storage System, and the EMC VNX series replaces the market-leading CLARiiON/Celerra products. The acquisitions by Dell, HP and Oracle, as well as the release of the IBM Storwize V7000, are changing relationships between vendors that were once considered to be mutually strategic. The most-significant relationship change was the severance of the OEM agreement between Dell and EMC, initially signed in late 2001. Even though IBM and Oracle have signaled that they will continue to sell block-access DS5000 and Sun Storage 6000 series, respectively sourced from NetApp, they no longer hold a premier position as an IBM or Oracle offering; Gartner is already observing a decline in period-over-period revenue. It is clear that vendors such as Dell, HP, IBM and Oracle, which have large and global distribution organizations, prefer to own their own ECB disk storage IP rather than sourcing it from a competing or enabling vendor. Beyond the above-referenced acquisitions and new midrange and high-end modular disk storage system releases, vendors continue to enhance their offerings from a technological perspective. Several systems now incorporate innovative functions such as thin provisioning, automated sublogical unit number (LUN) data tiering, controller-based data reduction, solid-state drives (SSDs), Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disk drives, disk drive spin down, reservationless snap copies and highdensity storage enclosures, all of which collectively or individually enhance efficiency and total cost of ownership (TCO). Vendors lacking these capabilities are working to bring them to market or are pursuing a segment of the midrange and high-end modular disk array market where the lack of these features does not reflect a competitive disadvantage. In summary, to the benefit of the end user, vendor competitiveness in the midrange and high-end modular disk array market is stronger than ever. Magic Quadrant This Magic Quadrant (see Figure 1) represents the current and probable relative strengths of vendors in the midrange and high-end modular disk array market at a moment in time by using a combination of product and nonproduct criteria. It is not a direct measure of product attractiveness, vendor market share, vendor viability or a vendor's support capabilities. A vendor's position in a Magic Quadrant is affected not just by the vendor's own actions, but by the actions of its competitors. This is the conceptual equivalent of marking on a curve or operating in a marketplace that is constantly evolving. Since the market's ability to absorb new technology, services and messages is limited, Magic Quadrants include both forward- and backward-looking evaluation criteria. This makes it impossible for major product announcements to instantly and dramatically alter a vendor's position in the Magic Quadrant, because without demonstrable success in the marketplace, which takes time, it is nothing more than an announcement. The use of backward- and forward-looking criteria in positioning vendors in a Magic Quadrant also favors vendors moving from the Visionaries to the Challengers quadrant and from the Challengers to the Leaders quadrant when things are going well. It also favors vendors moving from the Niche Players to the Visionaries quadrant when expanding their product offerings. And when things are Page 2 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

going poorly, it favors vendors in the Leaders quadrant falling back into the Challengers and even into the Niche Players quadrant. Although the move from the Visionaries to the Challengers quadrant implies a decrease in a vendor's completeness of vision, which is counterintuitive, it really highlights that a vendor has reached a level of maturity, acceptance and viability that qualifies it to be classified as a challenger to vendors listed in the Leaders quadrant. In other words, it is a step forward. It is reasonable to use a Magic Quadrant to ease concerns about a company's long-term viability or evaluate a vendor's ability to implement its product development, marketing and service/support capabilities and sales strategies. However, using it to justify vendor or product selection is not an appropriate use of a Magic Quadrant. Nonetheless, Magic Quadrants are good for highlighting key vendors in a market and helping IT personnel select a shortlist of vendors to evaluate. It is fine to buy from vendors that are not in the Leaders quadrant, particularly if your business needs require a specific feature set better provided by vendors in one of the other quadrants. This is particularly applicable to vendors that are growing their revenue and have demonstrated long-term viability. In fact, depending on the situation, Gartner will recommend including one or more of the storage vendors that fall outside the Leaders quadrant to be included on an end user's evaluation shortlist to gain access to innovative features or to address a particular storage infrastructure requirement. Moreover, Gartner readers should not compare the placement of vendors from previous midrange disk array Magic Quadrants with this update. The market is changing, and vendors continue to evolve their product offerings. The criteria used to evaluate a vendor and position it on the Magic Quadrant are identified and weighted in the Evaluation Criteria section. Gartner's assessments take into account the vendor's current product offering and overall strategies, as well as its publicly available future initiatives and product road maps. We also factor in how well vendors are driving market change or at least adapting to changing market requirements. Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 3 of 32

Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Midrange and High-End Modular Disk Arrays, 2011 Ability to Execute Challengers Fujitsu NEC Oracle Nexsan Huawei Symantec DataDirect Networks Leaders EMC NetApp HP IBM Dell Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems XIO DataDirect Networks Dell EMC Fujitsu Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems HP IBM NEC NetApp Nexsan SGI Oracle XIO Infortrend Huawei Symantec SGI Infortrend Niche Players Visionaries Completeness of Vision Source: Gartner (November 2011) Market Overview Users without a need for mainframe connectivity can choose from a variety of vendors' midrange and high-end modular disk array offerings. Many midrange and high-end modular disk array vendors support multiple block-access protocols, including Fibre Channel (FC) and Internet Small Computer System Interface (iscsi) on the same platform. A few are also offering Fibre Channel over Page 4 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

Ethernet (FCoE). Some vendors also offer integrated Common Internet File System (CIFS) and Network File System (NFS) file access protocol options. Market Definition/Description Gartner defines midrange and high-end modular disk array products as ECB redundant array of independent disks (RAID) storage systems that support general-purpose storage requirements and meet the following criteria: Use a dual-controller or n-node cluster architecture Support Unix, Linux, Windows and NetWare server operating environments Offer no mainframe support Have an average selling price of more than $24,999 Support block-access protocol Ship configured with disk drives Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria To be included in this Magic Quadrant, a vendor must meet the following criteria: The vendor must have midrange and high-end modular disk array storage systems commercially available and have active references that are using them in production scenarios. The vendor must generate at least $25 million in annual midrange and high-end modular disk array hardware revenue. The vendor must actively market its branded midrange and high-end modular disk array products in at least two major regions (for example, North America and EMEA, or Japan and Asia/Pacific). The vendor must sell its branded midrange and high-end modular disk array products to user organizations via its direct sales force or through a reseller partnership sales channel. Vendors offering midrange and high-end modular disk arrays that meet Gartner's requirements for this Magic Quadrant are listed in alphabetical order: DataDirect Networks S2A6620, S2A9900, and Storage Fusion Architecture (SFA) 10000 Dell Dell/Compellent Storage Center, EqualLogic PS series, and Dell/EMC CX4 series EMC VNX, CLARiiON CX4 series and Celerra NS series Fujitsu Eternus DX400 series and Eternus DX400 S2 series Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems Adaptable Modular Storage (AMS) 2000 Family Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 5 of 32

HP StorageWorks HP 3PAR InServ Storage Servers, HP/LeftHand P4000 SAN Solutions, and Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) P6000 series Huawei Symantec OceanSpace S5000 and S6000 IBM XIV Storage System, Storwize V7000, N series and System Storage DS5000 series Infortrend Enterprise Scalable Virtualized Architecture (ESVA) Storage Array NEC D3, D4 and D8 series NetApp FAS series and V series Nexsan E series, DATABeast, SASBeast, SATABeast, SATABeast Xi Oracle Oracle Pillar Axiom 600, Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliance and Oracle Sun Storage 6000 Array Family SGI InfiniteStorage IS4100, IS4600, IS5000, IS6120 and IS15000 XIO Hyper ISE and ISE Storage System Added No vendors added. Dropped 3PAR, Compellent and Pillar Data are deleted because they were acquired by HP, Dell and Oracle, respectively. Evaluation Criteria Ability to Execute The Ability to Execute axis highlights the change in vendor positioning directly attributable to vendor actions. Although it is important, the product attribute is just one of the seven attributes evaluated by Gartner to determine a vendor's placement with respect to execution on the y-axis of the Magic Quadrant. The criteria weights used for this analysis are unchanged from the 2010 version of this Magic Quadrant. Page 6 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria Evaluation Criteria Product/Service Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization) Sales Execution/Pricing Market Responsiveness and Track Record Marketing Execution Customer Experience Operations Weighting high high high high high high standard Source: Gartner (November 2011) Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 7 of 32

Completeness of Vision Completeness of vision focuses on potential. A vendor with average vision will anticipate and respond to change by accurately perceiving market trends and exploiting technology. However, a vendor with superior vision can anticipate, direct and initiate market trends. While important, the product attribute is just two of the eight attributes evaluated by Gartner to determine a vendor's placement with respect to vision on the x-axis of the Magic Quadrant. The weightings for these criteria are unchanged from Gartner's 2010 Magic Quadrant. Page 8 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

Table 2. Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria Evaluation Criteria Market Understanding Marketing Strategy Sales Strategy Offering (Product) Strategy Business Model Vertical/Industry Strategy Innovation Geographic Strategy Weighting standard high high high high standard high standard Source: Gartner (November 2011) Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 9 of 32

Leaders Vendors in the Leaders quadrant have the highest scores for their ability to execute and completeness of vision. A midrange and high-end modular disk array storage vendor in the Leaders quadrant has the market share, credibility, and marketing and sales capabilities needed to drive the acceptance of new technologies. These vendors demonstrate a clear understanding of market needs; they are innovators and thought leaders; and they have well-articulated plans that customers and prospects can use when designing their storage infrastructures and strategies. In addition, they have a presence in the five major geographical regions, consistent financial performance and broad platform support. Challengers A vendor in the Challengers quadrant participates in the broad general-purpose midrange and highend modular disk array market and executes well enough to be a serious threat to vendors in the Leaders quadrant. They have strong products, as well as sufficient credible market position and resources to sustain continued growth. However, they lack adequate depth in the visionary attributes to qualify for the Leaders quadrant. Financial viability is not an issue for vendors positioned in the Challengers quadrant. Visionaries A vendor in the Visionaries quadrant delivers innovative products that address operationally or financially important end-user problems at a broad scale but has not demonstrated the ability to capture market share or sustainable profitability. Visionary vendors are frequently privately held companies and acquisition targets for larger, established companies. The likelihood of acquisition often reduces the risks associated with installing their systems. Niche Players Vendors in the Niche Players quadrant are often narrowly focused on specific market or vertical segments, such as data warehousing, high-performance computing (HPC), low-cost disk-based data retention and other areas that are generally underpenetrated by the larger midrange and highend modular disk array vendors. This quadrant may also include vendors that are still ramping up their overall midrange and high-end modular disk array go-to-market efforts and have yet to develop the vision or the execution to break out of the Niche Players quadrant. Vendor Strengths and Cautions DataDirect Networks Data Direct Networks (DDN) is a privately held storage company founded in 1998 that has stayed focused on its core competencies in high-performance computing, entertainment, surveillance, and the building of resilient cloud storage infrastructures with its Web Object Scaler technology. Anticipating that the convergence of high-performance file systems and the growing availability of multidimensional analytics software would drive another wave of storage growth, DDN hired Jean- Page 10 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

Luc Chatelain, former Information Optimization CTO of HP, to lead its drive into this new market segment also known as "big data." DDN has done an effective job of managing and supporting their indirect channels as witnessed by their share of DDN revenue, and investing in their support organization as their installed base has grown. The company is benefiting from the rapid growth that is occurring in each of these market segments and the investments it has made in marketing, sales and support. Gartner ranked DataDirect Networks as the 11th largest vendor in its annual "Market Share: External Controller-Based Disk Storage, Worldwide, 2007-2010" report. During 3Q10 through 2Q11, compared with the same period the year before, DDN reports that it increased its branded midrange and high-end modular disk array hardware 48.6% to $160.5 million. Strengths DDN has upgraded its marketing and sales organization in 2011 in both skills and head count. Marketing and sales head count increased by approximately 40%; senior positions were filled by people with successful track records and knowledge of DDN, its markets and competitors. DDN revenue in traditional market segments continued double-digit growth in 2011, even as DDN has begun to gain traction in the big data and cloud storage markets, which suggests a disciplined approach to these emerging markets. DDN's Storage Fusion Architecture (SFA) benefits from simple memorable messaging that focuses on very high performance, Fibre Channel or InfiniBand host connectivity, scalability and the ability to support low latency in-storage computing. The SFA ecosystem of in-storage computing applications now includes DDN's Lustre-based offering (ExaScaler), DDN's GPFSbased offering (GridScaler) and customer provided applications. Cautions DDN's target markets have grown large enough to gain the attention of much larger storage and portfolio companies. More specifically, NetApp's acquisition of Engenio and EMC's focus on "big data" could garner more competition from them in the surveillance and "big data" markets, respectively. DDN's efforts to expand outside of the markets where it has enjoyed historical success hold the risk of distracting management attention and competing for development resources that might otherwise have been spent on enhancing DDN SAN offerings, particularly if they are successful. Some large organizations are reluctant to do business with privately held vendors that lack financial transparency, particularly when there may be alternatives that are available from large established vendors. Dell After some false starts in the late 1990s and in early 2000, Dell leveraged its 2001 OEM agreement with EMC to sell the co-branded Dell:EMC CLARiiON disk storage systems and the 2007 acquisition of EqualLogic to become the sixth largest vendor in the midrange to high-end modular ECB disk storage market by the end of 2010. In early 2011, as part of its journey to transition from a Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 11 of 32

reseller of technology developed by others, Dell acquired Compellent, a rapidly growing midrange to high-end ECB disk storage vendor whose products incorporate the latest data management and data service functions to replace the co-branded Dell:EMC CLARiiON. Concomitantly with the Compellent acquisition, Dell and EMC agreed to terminate their OEM agreement, which officially expired on 30 September 2011. As of mid-2011, Dell's midrange to high-end modular ECB disk storage system portfolio consists of the EqualLogic PS series for entry to midrange iscsi SAN infrastructures and the Dell Compellent Storage Center platform for midrange to high-end Fibre Channel/iSCSI SAN infrastructures. While capable of supporting heterogeneous server infrastructures, Dell primarily sells the EqualLogic PS series and the Dell Compellent Storage Center in association with its PowerEdge servers. Strengths Incorporating advanced data management and data services functions and featuring the latest Intel processor, solid and rotating drive technology, the Dell Compellent Storage Center and Dell EqualLogic PS series are highly competitive midrange to high-end modular ECB disk storage offerings for storage area network (SAN) infrastructures. Staffed with knowledgeable support professionals that are responsible for specific customer satisfaction, the Compellent Copilot customer support program has gained high customer praise for responsive issue resolution. Dell has committed to extending the Copilot program to its EqualLogic PS series over the coming months. Dell has retained the Compellent spindle-based and perpetual software pricing model as well as the EqualLogic all-inclusive software pricing model, both of which favorably position the Compellent and EqualLogic offerings against competitor's capacity-based software pricing models. Cautions The end of the OEM relationship between Dell and EMC puts users of co-branded Dell:EMC CX systems in the difficult position of having to choose between changing storage vendors or changing storage system technologies. The time to complete a firmware upgrade in a scale-out storage platform, such as Dell's EqualLogic PS series, is proportional to the number of nodes in the cluster: more nodes equals more time. Therefore, users with more than two nodes must carefully plan firmware upgrades during a time of low input/output (I/O) activity or during periods of planned downtime. The Dell Compellent Storage Center and Dell EqualLogic PS series lack support for onboard data deduplication or compression, which may represent a selection impediment in some competitive bid situations. EMC EMC's midrange disk arrays have established an overall good reputation on reliability, availability, price/performance and services. For many years, EMC's midrange modular disk arrays had been Page 12 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

composed of its CLARiiON CX series (block access only) and Celerra series (file and block access). In March 2011, EMC consolidated its CLARiiON and Celerra platforms into one physical platform called VNX series, augmented by a unified management tool called Unisphere, which replaced Navisphere and Celerra Manager. Despite the sharp decline in Dell's OEM revenue contribution, EMC was able to ramp up its sales and broaden its channel partners to offset the lost OEM business with Dell. EMC's midrange modular disk array revenue grew about 19% during 3Q10 through 2Q11, compared with the same period a year earlier, at a much faster rate than the growth rate of the overall midrange and high-end modular disk array market, reflecting a healthy transition and upgrade to the VNX series within its customer base, as well as new customer gains. As a result, it increased revenue market share to 18.6%, continuing its No. 1 lead in the market. Strengths VNX represents a solid step toward unified storage, an architecture that offers flexibility and ease of management for customers. The physical consolidation of CLARiiON and Celerra products simplifies deployment choices for customers, who can now add new connectivity options nondisruptively. EMC has simplified storage management and services delivery. Unisphere is generating positive feedback from users regarding its ease of use, more integrated management experience, and an extensible architecture that includes provisioning, monitoring and replication management. With VNX, EMC added self-service capabilities for VNX migration, which includes a replication tool and multilingual online live chat. EMC has simplified VNX software pricing policies. It does not charge for NAS and SAN protocol licenses. Software features are bundled into logical packages at discounted prices for automated storage tiering, local and remote data protection including a fully licensed RecoverPoint/SE, application protection for Microsoft Exchange, SQL and SharePoint, Oracle and SAP, as well as a security and compliance suite. Cautions The VNX series, although converged into one physical system, still runs two operating environments one from CLARiiON for block access (FC and iscsi) and the other from Celerra for file access (NFS or CIFS). While management is accomplished via Unisphere the integrated management interface customers have to choose from disparate replication tools for the VNX, which adds a layer of complexity. The VNX system is a dual-controller design that lacks the automatic load balancing and scalability available with some competitive products. VNX controller-based block services have limited snapshot functionality (eight per volume), which can cause operational complexity, especially in virtualized environments that require short recovery point objectives or that use snapshots to boot virtual machines. Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 13 of 32

EMC's recommendation to use both FAST VP and FAST Cache when autotiering volumes requires storage administrators' familiarity with application workloads and careful initial planning because SSD resources are manually allocated between FAST VP and FAST Cache, which creates the potential need to rebalance those SSD resources as workloads evolve. Fujitsu Fujitsu has historically been a strong supplier of Fujitsu brand midrange modular ECB disk storage systems in Japan. However, its subsidiaries and the jointly owned Fujitsu Siemens organization in Europe built their branded midrange disk storage base selling technology sourced from EMC. In 2009, Fujitsu bought out Siemens; renamed Fujitsu Siemens as Fujitsu Technology Solutions (FTS) and established a new Global Business Group (GBG) to increase the percentage of Fujitsu's IT business outside of Japan. One of the major GBG initiatives was to transition from selling blockaccess midrange disk storage systems sourced from EMC under an OEM agreement to selling the Fujitsu developed midrange disk storage system under the Eternus brand. In mid-2011, Fujitsu announced that the journey to remove all previously OEM disk storage offerings from its portfolio is complete and that the GBG regional organizations now embrace the Eternus DX400 series as their worldwide branded midrange disk storage system. The midrange DX400 series is part of an Eternus family, bounded on one side by the entry-level DX90/80/60 series and on the other side by the high-end DX8000 series. The entire Eternus disk storage system family is based on a common architecture with unified management software. Fujitsu is the second largest provider of ECB disk storage systems in Japan, and as of mid-2011 the seventh largest vendor on a worldwide basis. Strengths Fujitsu continues to enhance the competitiveness of its Eternus DX400 series. The DX400 S2 series, released in May 2011, embraces the latest 6 Gbps SAS disk drive technologies, upgrades iscsi to 10 Gbps Ethernet, adds 10 Gbps FCoE, doubles the maximum number of hard-disk drives (HDDs) to 960, doubles the maximum number of host interfaces to 32, doubles the maximum cache memory to 96GB and has taken steps to increase the awareness and integration with Oracle, SAP and Microsoft Exchange. Fujitsu has made the investments to integrate the Eternus DX400 series with the VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XEN virtualization stacks, including full support of VMware's vstorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), Storage Awareness (VASA) and SRM as well as offering prequalified and preconfigured systems for Hyper-V. To attract new Eternus DX400 series customers, Fujitsu is offering a range of product acquisition programs, including try-and-buy, flexible financing options through Fujitsu Financial Services, and specially priced server/storage/service bundles. In addition, working with select independent software vendor (ISV) partners, Fujitsu is offering preconfigured solutions to provide turnkey systems for specific applications including email archiving and compliance. Page 14 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

Cautions The lack of transparency regarding Eternus DX400 series revenue achievement in the North American and Latin American regions may reflect limited traction in these important and large regions. Organizations considering the Eternus DX400 series in these regions should conduct rigorous reference checks regarding performance and support before committing to the Eternus DX400 platform. The Fujitsu Eternus DX400 series does not support file- and block-access protocols on the same platform, which dilute its competitiveness in infrastructures where the client makes this capability a requirement. Fujitsu has underinvested in marketing and sales relative to the breadth of their product offerings and the market opportunities available in developed and emerging markets. Despite their technical competence and product quality, they have yet to garner significant market mind share or generate excitement in the more visible and high growth segments of the midrange disk storage market. Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems Hitachi Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a very large electronics company with diverse global activities. Responsible for designing the Hitachi monolithic frame-based and modular block-access storage platforms, Hitachi is also responsible for selling and supporting its disk storage solutions in Japan. Hitachi Data Systems, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is a wholly own subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., and is responsible for selling and supporting Hitachi disk storage platforms in all countries outside of Japan. Hitachi Data Systems does business in more than 100 countries and regions. The AMS 2000 family is composed of three models 2100, 2300 and 2500 each supporting a maximum number of HDDs that match the respective model's CPU performance. While a good percentage of the AMS 2000 family are sold as stand-alone systems supporting primary storage applications, an equally large percentage of AMS 2000 systems are sold as external disk storage attached to a Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) or its predecessor the Universal Storage Platform V (USPV/USPVM) via the Hitachi Universal Volume Manager secondary storage. Hitachi and Hitachi Data Systems use a combination of direct sales and indirect sales channels to sell the AMS 2000 family into the end-user market. As of mid-2011, Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems is the sixth largest provider of midrange to high-end modular disk storage systems. Strengths The symmetric active/active controller architecture with automatic load balancing sets the AMS 2000 family apart from competing dual controller midrange to high-end modular disk arrays in that each controller can access all the LUNs with equal performance. This architecture eases and simplifies LUN assignment, improves performance particularly in a VMware virtualized infrastructure and enables I/O to be automatically rerouted when firmware is being upgraded. Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 15 of 32

Customer feedback supports the observation that Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems has earned the reputation of providing very reliable midrange to high-end modular disk storage systems supported by a worldwide skilled and responsive service organization. Common application program interfaces across all Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems disk storage platforms simplifies operational management when AMS2000 midrange to high-end modular disk arrays and monolithic frame-based VSP/USPV/USPVM disk arrays comprise an organization's storage infrastructure. Cautions The Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems AMS 2000 midrange to high-end modular disk arrays are at a competitive disadvantage if a storage infrastructure requires a unified storage architecture that seamlessly supports block- and file-access host protocols on the same platform. The AMS 2000 family does not support unlimited snapshots per LUN; does not provide controller-based data reduction functionality; does not support automated sub-lun data tiering; and does not support multitenancy, all of which collectively or individually represent shortfalls when competing against midrange to high-end modular disk arrays that incorporate these features. Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems increased AMS 2000 family revenue by 7.3% during 3Q10 through 2Q11 compared with the same period the year before, while the midrange and highend modular disk array market grew 8.2%, indicating that Hitachi/Hitachi Data Systems needs to further expand its field sales and support organization as well as to further strengthen its reseller channel relationships to keep pace with faster-growing competitors. HP HP is the third-largest vendor in the midrange and high-end storage array market. Prior to 2011, it lost market share due to slower innovation pace with its EVA line than competitors and low storage attach rate to HP servers. In the past year, HP has been able to regain market share through the acquisition of 3PAR and implementing several internal changes. Notable changes include: new storage executives led by former 3PAR CEO, new storage brand, 3PAR integration, and new sales and marketing initiatives and product packages focused on converged infrastructure, virtualization and cloud computing. HP is aggressively selling its P4000 SAN solution and 3PAR systems against competitors for virtualization and cloud computing. Both systems serve as the storage component of HP's VirtualSystems and have extensive VAAI and VASA integrations with VMware. 3PAR is the storage component of HP's CloudSystems. HP has no sunset plans for its P6000 EVA, which continues to meet the basic needs of a large number of customers, especially in some emerging countries, and accounted for over 50% of its midrange and high-end modular disk array revenue in the second calendar quarter of 2011. The addition of 3PAR and the accelerated revenue growth of the P4000 have been able to offset the revenue decline of the P6000 EVA, resulting in the overall 19% revenue growth for the three product lines during 3Q10 through 2Q11, compared with the same period a year before. Page 16 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

Strengths The 3PAR technologies provide HP with a highly scalable modular storage architecture that spans from the midrange to the high end. Built on its reputation for thin storage, multitenancy and autotiering, the new, fourth-generation system provides faster, more granular thin provisioning and more optimization for remote replication. The November 2010 release of the P4000 SAN/iQ 9.0 featured some important enhancements to the scale-out iscsi SAN platform, including network RAID 5 and 6 for improved storage utilization, VMware VAAI integration, and management automation for online upgrade and global configuration. The P6000 EVA systems offer thin provisioning, dynamic LUN migration and more host connection capabilities. The new Storage Federation technologies called Peer Motion for the P4000 or 3PAR provide customers with a nondisruptive migration tool for dynamic load balancing and upgrading between systems within the same homogeneous family, offering higher storage utilization rates and more business continuity and IT agility than before. Cautions Despite new features added in 2011, the P6000 EVA is not strategically positioned by HP compared with the P4000 and 3PAR products; therefore, R&D resources for the P6000 EVA are likely to weaken for future innovation. Compared with competing products, the P4000 SAN Solutions need to improve SSD support and microcode upgrade time. HP's efforts on unified file/block storage are still work in progress, with the unification aspects mostly occurring on the hardware side, less so on the management software side. Huawei Symantec Founded in 2008, Huawei Symantec is a joint venture between China's top telecom solution provider Huawei (51%) and U.S.-based Symantec (49%). The joint venture's objective is to integrate Symantec's storage and security expertise, and Huawei's hardware engineering capability and its telecom installed base, to provide storage and security solutions for both telecom carriers and nontelecom organizations. Huawei Symantec grew its worldwide Oceanspace S5000 and S6000 series midrange modular disk storage systems revenue by 50% during 3Q10 through 2Q11, compared with the same period the year before, and by mid-2011 it became the third largest ECB disk storage system vendor in China. Beyond China, Huawei Symantec is focusing on increasing its presence in growth markets including India, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Middle East, South Africa and Latin America. Establishing productive channel partnerships in North America and Western Europe remains an unfulfilled objective. Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 17 of 32

Strengths The 1Q11 Oceanspace S5000 and S5000T refresh enhancing performance, power efficiency and capacity scalability; the release of the pure SSD OceanSpace Dorado 2100; and the soonto-be-updated S6800E and S6800T systems show that Huawei Symantec is willing to make the necessary R&D investments to keep its midrange and high-end modular disk storage system portfolio competitive. Leveraging its presence in the telecommunications industry, Huawei Symantec introduced Oceanspace CSS (CloudStor Cloud Storage System), featuring a unified storage pool, distributed file system, global namespace management and nondisruptive upgrades to support its strategy of helping telecommunications carriers and other organizations to launch public cloud services. Designed and manufactured in China, Huawei Symantec is using its favorable labor costs to use price as a competitive advantage for its midrange and high-end modular disk storage systems. Cautions Huawei and Symantec are reviewing their joint ownership agreement to determine the structure of their ongoing ownership. Finalization of this joint venture relationship has not been determined as of October 2011, raising uncertainties about Huawei and Symantec future product strategies and global expansion initiatives. Huawei Symantec has weak global brand awareness and zero to very limited presence in North America, Japan and Western Europe. It appears that Symantec is not ready to help the joint venture to leverage its brand recognition and channel resources in these markets. Although the Huawei and Symantec midrange and high-end modular storage systems provide a broad range of data services, software customer deployments indicate that these features are sparingly selected signaling that the Huawei and Symantec disk arrays are being used to support second or lower-tier storage requirements. Moreover, the Huawei and Symantec platforms do not support any type of data reduction or multitenancy technologies. IBM IBM's midrange and high-end modular disk arrays include the new Storwize V7000, the XIV, the DS5000 (sourced from NetApp's Engenio technology), and the N series (sourced from NetApp FAS and V series). The XIV and DS5000 support block-access protocols only, while the N series and the V7000 are unified storage with support for both block and file access. However, IBM positions the N series to focus specifically on the file access market. XIV is based on a scale-out architecture and is sold primarily by a dedicated direct sales force to non-ibm storage customers in the open systems environment. The V7000 series is the most significant internally developed product since the SAN Volume Controller (SVC). This V7000 launch represented a strategic shift toward using internal technologies for its midrange storage system, away from leveraging OEM relationships. The V7000 is sold primarily through indirect channels with the help of a dedicated IBM global sales team. It aims to replace the older IBM DS5000 series as well as competitors' arrays with a no-charge, Page 18 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

nondisruptive migration program. The DS5000 will continue to be supported by IBM through the end of its life cycle. IBM's midrange and high-end modular disk array revenue grew 8% during 3Q10 through 2Q11 compared to the same period the year before about the same rate as the overall market. Although the XIV continues its high growth, and the V7000 is ramping fast, the 25% revenue decline with the DS5000 dragged down overall performance, resulting in no change in market share year over year. Strengths The Storwize V7000 combines technologies from the SAN Volume Controller (for storage virtualization), the XIV (for Web-based user interface) and the high-end DS8000 (for back-end storage) to form a new modular midrange disk array. It features more robust software features than the DS5000, such as thin provisioning, advisor based automated tiering (EasyTier), as well as storage virtualization that enables nondisruptive migration and heterogeneous storage platform support. IBM announced NAS functions to the V7000 in October 2011, making it a unified storage. The scale-out XIV architecture sports high performance scalability with low-cost drives, automated load balancing, low performance impact upon a controller failure, subminute nondisruptive micro-code update, fast disk rebuilt time, and an intuitive user interface. The third generation launched in 2011 announced the support for SSDs and InfiniBand for low-latency interconnect, and multiple XIV systems can be clustered behind the SVC. The V7000 and the XIV are integrated with the Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager for fast and efficient backup, recovery and cloning, as well as with the Tivoli Productivity Center for integrated SAN-wide storage management. Cautions The de-emphasis on the DS5000 may cause concerns among existing DS5000 customers about their long-term strategy on this product. The lack of parity RAID on XIV may require more raw storage capacity, making the solution occupy more footprint for large archiving and backup data environments with high-density drives. The newly announced NAS features on the V7000 series may impact IBM's N series' OEM relationship with NetApp. Infortrend Founded in 1993, Infortrend has established a successful technology innovation and financial track record providing ECB RAID technology to OEMs, system integrators (SIs), distributors and valueadded resellers (VARs). Headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan, with sales and support operations in 16 countries including the United States, Infortrend is a publicly traded company on the Taiwan stock Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 19 of 32

exchange. Infortrend began participating directly in the disk array storage system business with the introduction of EonStor in 2003 and shipping its flagship ESVA, a fully configured midrange modular disk storage system, in 2009. Employing an indirect channel go-to-market strategy, Infortrend is targeting growth opportunities such as server virtualization, medical records, media and surveillance. Leveraging expanded investments in marketing, sales and support, Infortrend has gained a number of visible ESVA wins in the Chinese, Taiwanese and EMEA markets. Infortrend reports that revenue grew to $80.3 million in 2010. Strengths The Infortrend ESVA is a modern feature-rich storage system that offers thin provisioning, autotiering, snapshot and volume copy, synchronous and asynchronous replication, and distributed load balancing. Beyond providing functions necessary to discover, configure, administer and monitor the ESVA midrange modular disk storage system, the Infortrend SANWatch Storage Management Suite enables ESVAs to be configured into virtual pools of storage. Infortrend is investing in its future; examples include creating a presales configuration and budgeting tool, growing the service and support organization, developing a channel support infrastructure and collateral marketing materials and ESVA Configurator, which make them a user-friendly channel partner. Cautions Infortrend's reliance on indirect sales channels and its strategy of competing on price make the ESVA attractive to SMBs, but may limit its ability to penetrate enterprise-size accounts because selling value-added software and scalability requires a high-touch sales model and access to C- level executives. Scaling the service and support organization while aggressively ramping up sales requires major investments and time to build credibility. Although the limited feedback Gartner has in North America on ESVA reliability, performance and SANWatch ease of use has been positive, it is unclear whether doing nondisruptive updates is the norm or the exception among ESVA users. This, coupled with Infortrend's small installed base in North America, should make reference checking and interviewing the local support team integral parts of the due diligence process. NetApp NetApp entered the ECB, disk storage market under the moniker "Network Appliance" and made its early mark as the leading provider of entry-level to midrange network-attached storage filer platforms. Initial success represented collaborative applications and file server consolidation. In late 2008, NetApp officially changed its corporate name to NetApp, reflecting the ability of its FASbranded storage systems to support a wide swath of general-purpose storage infrastructure requirements. Page 20 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

In the 2001 and 2002 time frame, NetApp announced support for Oracle8i and 9i, IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL applications validating that a file-based storage appliance could successfully support transactional-oriented database applications. The announcement of support for Fibre Channel block-access protocol in October 2002 created NetApp's initial unified storage platform which it further enhanced in January 2003 by releasing support for the iscsi block-access protocol. NetApp's unified storage architecture has been one of its key differentiating characteristics. Today, NetApp is a leading provider of ECB disk storage. In 2010, NetApp increased its year-overyear storage platform revenue by 50.9%, enabling it to jump from the sixth largest provider to the third largest provider of ECB disk storage systems. Through 1H11, NetApp increased its year-overyear market share to 12.7%. Strengths The unified storage architecture seamlessly scales from NetApp's entry-level FAS2000 through its midrange FAS3000 and up to its high-end FAS6000, enabling it to satisfy varying primary, archiving and backup use cases utilizing a common operating system, data management services and system management software, all of which favorably influence TCO. The release of ONTAP 8.1 Cluster-Mode further extends NetApp's unified storage architecture at scale. NetApp is leveraging its FlexPod strategic relationships with VMware, Cisco, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix, and SAP to become a leading provider of ECB disk storage in tightly integrated virtualized infrastructures. In addition to focusing on the traditional storage 5000 and SMB markets, NetApp has launched comprehensive marketing programs to position it as the storage vendor of choice with service providers that offer shared cloud services. Beyond growing field support head count by 23% between August 2010 and August 2011 to further enhance its level of service and support quality, NetApp is coupling its automated phone home capability with analytics methodology to predict and resolve failure issues before they occur. Cautions Although ONTAP 8.1 Cluster-Mode holds promise regarding scaling unified storage performance and capacity beyond the available two-node FAS configurations, it does not scale the performance of individual volumes. The initial release also lacks a few key features including support for synchronous replication (Metro Cluster), SnapVault and VMware's VAAI for block access. Gartner recommends that users should proceed cautiously before broadly deploying to support mission-critical applications at performance load until ONTAP 8.1 has been sufficiently market-validated. Noting that NetApp sources a portion of CommVault's Simpana software as a part of its SnapProtect management software offering, Gartner recommends that users obtain written assurance about support and upgrades in case this relationship terminates or CommVault is acquired by a competitor to NetApp. Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 21 of 32

ONTAP's lack of automated data tiering or automatic back-end disk load balancing pushes these tasks onto storage administrators, makes optimally sizing each tier of storage in a FAS system more difficult, and leaves the system more vulnerable to changes in workload performance profiles. Nexsan A privately held storage company founded in 1999, Nexsan has filed a Form S-1 with the United States Security and Exchange Commission dated 8 April 8 2010, biding its time until it is right to move forward with an initial public offering. Featuring dense packaging of low-cost, large-capacity SATA disk drives, Nexsan pioneered the development of midrange disk array storage solutions for long-term secondary storage applications. Augmented by AutoMAID technology, Nexsan midrange disk array products continue to drive watt-per-terabyte utilization downward to slow the rising cost of power in the data center. To address a broader and more general-purpose midrange modular disk array market and to transition from being a provider of secondary storage for fixed content to a provider of primary and secondary storage for the SMB market, Nexsan has introduced a series of new disk array models that feature a broad data services software library: These include the E series model E60 and E18 disk arrays. Employing a dedicated indirect channel go-to-market strategy, Nexsan reports that it partners with more than 600 resellers worldwide and has sold more than 28,000 systems in 65 countries. Gartner ranked Nexsan as the 18th largest vendor in its annual report,"market Share: External Controller-Based Disk Storage, Worldwide, 2007-2010." Strengths Nexsan's support organization is delivering a solid customer satisfaction, and it seems to have solid relationships with its major channel partners. Nexsan's midrange storage systems deliver a balanced combination of high-availability, high areal density and aggressive price/performance relative to larger, more established storage vendors. These characteristics make Nexsan's Boy, Beast, and E series attractive solutions for applications storing large amounts of data such as hosting large unstructured data repositories, long-term bulk active-archive storage and as a target for D2D data backup/recovery solutions. The E series is Nexsan's flagship midrange disk array and its system of choice when competing in midsize organizations for deployment into mission-critical online transaction processing environments because of its newness and ability to automatically and nondisruptively recover from disk failures using spare disks. Cautions Many large organizations are unwilling to do business with small privately held storage companies that lack financial transparency and a history of consistently generating profits. This effectively limits Nexsan's ability to move upmarket at a time when more established storage vendors are competing more aggressively on price. Page 22 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

The lack of thin provisioning and autotiering in the SASBeast and SATABeast is a significant functional deficiency, which detracts from Nexsan's storage efficiency messaging and aggressive pricing and limits these products' ability to compete outside of their target markets. Users building virtualized server and storage infrastructures should validate that Nexsan will not delay the deployment of new releases of VMware, Hyper-V and Citrix and that they are supported by whatever storage virtualization appliances your organization is using or planning to use. NEC NEC is a $36 billion technology company in 2010 with deep roots in communications, servers, storage and semiconductors. Its consumer products are widely available worldwide. Its ECB disk storage system revenue, however, is a very small portion of its overall revenue. Within the disk storage market, NEC has built a reputation for building reliable storage systems with all basic features. The vast majority of its midrange and high-end modular disk array revenue has been driven by domestic sales in Japan, and its storage presence in overseas markets is very limited. In the past year, NEC has been working on a new M series to gradually replace the D series. The entry-level M100 is launched in October 2011 to replace D3/D3i and will be followed by additional models in 2012. Gartner does not track NEC's ECB disk storage array revenue on a quarterly basis. For 2010, Gartner estimated that NEC's ECB disk array hardware revenue came in at $146 million, declining by 1.1% over 2009. Its revenue market share stood at 0.8% in 2010. Strengths The NEC D series is a competitive modular disk storage solution that meets customer expectations with respect to scalability, performance/throughput and functionality. Highlights include space-efficient writable snapshots, thin provisioning, iscsi boot from SAN, virtual storage partitioning, dynamic pools, and availability features that enable the D series to tolerate cache failures and avoid many disk-related repair activities by repairing and recovering from potential drive failures. The new M series includes most of the latest hardware development in terms of CPU, memory, host and storage interfaces, and disk drive types, resulting in much faster throughput, disk rebuild time and microcode update time than the D series. Both the M series and D series feature stable LUN locking for VMware for predictable performance. NEC is selling a hardware and software package for simplified and affordable pricing of the M100; the package includes thin provisioning, volume snapshot and replication within an array, and an embedded Storage Manager Express. Cautions The small presence of NEC in non-japan regions may create issues with timely services and support. Customers reported English language translation issues with documentation. Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 23 of 32

The reduction in NEC's North American local distributors and resellers in the past year may limit the ability of NEC to gain recognition and market share. ISV support remains limited; its lack of Citrix support limits its target market and creates potential deployment risks. Oracle Oracle entered the storage hardware business with its acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2009. After the acquisition, Oracle severed its reseller relationship with Hitachi for the high-end monolithic frame-based storage systems and started heavily promoting the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance as the best midrange modular array to support Oracle applications. Oracle continues selling the Sun Storage 6000 series, sourced from NetApp's Engenio technology, to fulfill customers' basic needs for an affordable, good-performing SAN array because the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance's strength is on the NAS side. In June 2011, Oracle acquired Pillar Data Systems, a privately held storage vendor that was funded by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's private investment firm. The Pillar Axiom 600 system is known for its QoS I/O prioritization management for multitenancy and different application workloads for physical and virtual server environments. Oracle's midrange modular disk array revenue declined by 11% from 3Q10 through 2Q11, compared with the same period the year before. Its market share for the year ending 2Q11 stood at 2.8%, a drop from 3.4% a year earlier. Gartner estimated that Pillar's disk array hardware revenue was $48.6 million in 2010. Strengths By owning both hardware and application software, Oracle has the advantage to deepen the integration between Oracle applications and its Sun ZFS Appliance and the Pillar Axiom 600 storage system to provide better performance, efficiency and user experience. Although much of the integration is still a work in progress, today both storage systems support Oracle Hybrid Columnar Compression, for example. Oracle's acquisition of Pillar boosts user confidence about Pillar's future R&D. The Pillar Axiom 600 supports up to 128 RAID controllers and maintains a constant 6-1 disk-to-controller ratio, delivering predictable performance and high disk utilization. The recent major Pillar Axiom Release 5 adds the physically separate storage domain capability, asynchronous and synchronous remote SAN replication, and a central management tool for multiple distributed Axioms with more detailed monitoring and trending analysis. The Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliance unified storage system pioneered the concept of hybrid storage pools, combining SSDs and low-performance, high-capacity drives for cost-effective price/performance. It also stands out with its granular monitoring and reporting tool called DTrace Analytics and features in-line deduplication and compression, thin provisioning, and allin-one integrated pricing. Page 24 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

Cautions Oracle's long-range commitment to the Sun Storage 6000 system has come into question by Gartner clients. Therefore, customers of the 6000 series are advised to re-evaluate their current vendor relations and product positions. Oracle's large-enterprise focus in terms of its pricing strategy may hurt its relationships with some longtime Sun customers in the midmarket. Gartner's interactions with Oracle make Gartner believe that the R&D focus on integrating Oracle-owned storage arrays with Oracle software stack may reduce the resources devoted to other platforms and applications such as VMware and Microsoft. Although the ZFS Storage Appliance supports file and block protocols, Oracle has acknowledged that the Pillar Axiom 600 storage system is designed better for block-access applications and is positioning the ZFS Storage Appliance for file-focused workloads. SGI With operations in 25 countries, SGI is a global provider of a broad line of low-cost, midrange and high-end Intel Architecture x86 servers that are augmented by suites of management, performance and foundation software, and a lineup of SGI brand disk-based storage products that support its go-to-market strategy of addressing vertical markets with data-intensive computing and performance-oriented data storage requirements that can scale capacity. SGI's external disk storage portfolio sold under the InfiniteStorage brand ranges from external "just a bunch of disks" to storage servers to midrange and high-end modular disk storage platforms. The InfiniteStoragebranded midrange and high-end modular storage systems are sourced from DataDirect Networks and NetApp under OEM agreements. SGI employs a mix of direct sales and indirect sales channels, including distributors, SIs, VARs and OEMs, to reach its target markets. Defense, weather and climate, life sciences, energy, media and entertainment, aerospace and automotive design are representative vertical markets that benefit from SGI's lineup of InfiniteStorage midrange and highend modular disk array storage systems. Strengths Emphasizing high bandwidth performance and dense packaging characteristics, the SGI InfiniteStorage midrange and high-end modular disk arrays are purpose-built platforms that are suited best for data intensive applications with large datasets including, among others, full motion video, data analytics, high-performance computing, rich media and life sciences research, and/or capacity-intensive applications. Sized to appropriately support its business plan, SGI's professional and customer service organizations possess competencies in deploying and supporting complex storage infrastructures for the vertical markets SGI targets for penetration. By allowing multiple users to share one version of content at Fibre Channel or InfiniBand speeds in a SAN infrastructure, the CXFS optional host software enhances the product attractiveness of the SGI midrange and high-end modular disk array systems. Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 25 of 32

Cautions SGI has not incorporated VMware's VAAI and vsphere 5 or embraced the Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track program for its midrange and high-end modular disk storage systems. SGI sources the InfiniteStorage 16000, 15000, and 6120 systems from DataDirect Networks and the InfiniteStorage 5500, 5000, 4600, and 4100 systems from NetApp and must rely on these enabling vendors to provide the necessary features, functions and performance to sustain product competitiveness. The SGI InfiniteStorage midrange and high-end modular disk storage systems do not support thin provisioning, automated sub-lun data tiering, controller-based data reduction, unlimited snapshots and multitenancy, which impedes their competitiveness in storage infrastructures that benefit from these capabilities. XIO XIO is a privately held storage company with a long and unusual history. Founded in 1995 as Xiotech, the company was acquired by Seagate Technology in 2000 and after two years of operating as a wholly owned subsidiary was spun off to a venture capital firm with connections to Seagate Technology. In 2007 after realizing that its largest customers would not buy its Intelligent Storage Element (ISE), Seagate sold its Advanced Storage Architecture (ASA) group and all rights to ISE technology to Xiotech. The transformation of Xiotech began in 2008 with the launch of the Emprise 5000, a storage platform based on the ISE architecture, and continued with the appointment of a new CEO in 2009. After retiring its Magnitude and Emprise brands in 2010, Xiotech completed its transformation by renaming the company "XIO" in August 2011. XIO's current go-to-market strategy is to position its Hyper ISE and its ISE Storage System offerings as platforms with superior performance scalability and better price/performance outcomes than competing midrange modular storage systems. XIO believes that the ISE-based storage systems are a good fit for supporting database, virtual servers and virtual desktop infrastructures (VDIs). Gartner ranked XIO as the 14th largest vendor in its annual report, "Market Share: External Controller-Based Disk Storage, Worldwide, 2007-2010." Strengths ISE is a self-contained dual-controller virtualized disk storage array that is difficult, if not impossible, for other vendors to duplicate. ISE storage infrastructures features high performance that scales with capacity, fast rebuild times attributable to rebuilding data on a disk surface rather than the whole disk, "real-time hot-spot data placement" when configured with a mix of SSD and HDD, and high-density packaging. ISE's self-repair capabilities give it an order of magnitude improvement in frequency of repair activities over other storage systems that replace disks when problems are detected and make it possible for XIO to offer a standard five-year warranty. X-Volume is host-based software that allows users to stripe or concatenate logical volumes across multiple ISE systems. X-Volume supports nondisruptive logical volume expansion and Page 26 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

has already demonstrated its ability to support volumes as large as 244TB. This combination of capabilities promises simplified storage management by encouraging the use of large volumes. Cautions Renaming the company to highlight its new product strategy and break with its past carries a number of risks, not least of which is the loss of some brand equity. Other risks include making it more difficult to retain existing Magnitude customers and gaining credibility with prospects that may choose to treat XIO as new company, particularly if they are larger organizations that may already be biased against doing business with privately held emerging storage companies. X-Volume is part of the XIO MPIO driver, which makes it relatively easy to install and transparent to software layers above it. However, putting storage functionality into the server software stack also carries a number of negative connotations, beginning with a history of user reluctance to adding storage-related software into the software stack. Examples include file and volume-based replication, storage virtualization functionality, and data deduplication technologies. The lack of thin provisioning and autotiering in X-Volume and ISE, coupled with X-Volume's limited compatibility support matrix, may narrow ISE's appeal outside of Windows running on physical servers or VMware virtual machines, Hyper-V and the Citrix markets. Recommended Reading Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription. "Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes: How Gartner Evaluates Vendors Within a Market" "SWOT: HP, Disk Storage Systems and Storage Software, Worldwide" "IT Market Clock for Storage, 2011" "2010 U.S. Data Center Polling Results: Attendees Identify Storage Providers That Deliver the Best Value and Simplest Infrastructure Solutions" "Hype Cycle for Storage Technologies, 2011" "Dell's Acquisition of Compellent Strengthens Its Position in the Modular Storage Market" "Predicts 2010: New Technologies and Service Delivery Models Will Transform the Storage Markets" "Recommendations for a Storage Array Dashboard" "How to Negotiate Lower Storage Acquisition Costs" "Users Are Gaining Agility and Lowering Costs With New Storage Technologies" Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 27 of 32

"Choosing Between Monolithic Versus Modular Storage: Robustness, Scalability and Price Are the Tiebreakers" "How Much and What Type of Disk Storage Do IT Departments Need" Page 28 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

Acronym Key and Glossary Terms AMS Adaptable Modular Storage CIFS EMEA ESVA EVA FC HPC iscsi ISE ISV LUN MSA NAS NFS QoS RAID SAN SAS SATA SFA SLA SSD TCO Common Internet File System Europe, the Middle East and Africa Enterprise Scalable Virtualized Architecture Enterprise Virtual Array Fibre Channel high-performance computing Internet Small Computer System Interface Intelligent Storage Element independent software vendor logical unit number Modular Smart Array network-attached storage Network File System quality of service redundant array of independent disks storage area network Serial Attached SCSI Serial Advanced Technology Attachment Storage Fusion Architecture service-level agreement solid-state drive total cost of ownership Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 29 of 32

USP VAR Universal Storage Platform value-added reseller Vendors Added or Dropped We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes as markets change. As a result of these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant or MarketScope may change over time. A vendor appearing in a Magic Quadrant or MarketScope one year and not the next does not necessarily indicate that we have changed our opinion of that vendor. This may be a reflection of a change in the market and, therefore, changed evaluation criteria, or a change of focus by a vendor. Evaluation Criteria Definitions Ability to Execute Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor that compete in/ serve the defined market. This includes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills, etc., whether offered natively or through OEM agreements/ partnerships as defined in the market definition and detailed in the subcriteria. Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization): Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood of the individual business unit to continue investing in the product, to continue offering the product and to 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 and Track 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 in order 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, thought leadership, word-of-mouth and sales activities. Page 30 of 32 Gartner, Inc. G00219289

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, etc. 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 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 product 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 set 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 verticals. 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. Gartner, Inc. G00219289 Page 31 of 32

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