IT Pros Select 2014 Brand Leaders for ADCs, Converged Systems, Low Latency Networking, Object Storage, Open-Source Systems, & WLAN

Quanta, Cisco and HP each top two categories; Brocade, Citrix, EMC, Intel, Mellanox, Oracle and Red Hat also winners in recent brand leader survey. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) October 31, 2014 - IT Brand Pulse, a trusted source for research, data and analysis about data center infrastructure, today announced the results of thirteen brand leader surveys covering a variety of enterprise server, storage, networking and software products.

IT Pros from around the world responded to the independent, non-sponsored surveys, and were asked which vendors they perceive as the leader in the following categories: OCP Server, OCP Server Processor, OCP Storage, Scale-out Object Storage Software, Scale-out Object Storage Systems, Dense Low-Power Microserver, Converged Systems for Databases, Converged Systems for Virtualization, Low-Latency Ethernet Switch, Low-Latency Ethernet Adapter, WLAN Controllers & Access Points, Application Delivery Controllers, and Fibre Channel Network Monitoring.

As distributed computing technology makes it way from hyperscale environments into the enterprise, IT professionals were also asked to select the company who contributed most to Innovation in scale-out computing for the masses.

"Scale-out, software defined architectures, and open-source hardware are expanding their role in the enterprise," said Frank Berry, CEO and Sr. Analyst with IT Brand Pulse. "In addition to familiar IT brands recognized by survey respondents, Quanta and Red Hat have emerged as brand leaders representing the nascent OCP and object storage presence in enterprise data centers."

Survey Highlights
- Quanta proved to be the IT Pro favorite for open-source hardware. Quanta dominated the OCP Server category and took four out of six leader awards for OCP Storage. IT professionals chose Quanta as the Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation Leader for OCP Servers with HP/Coyote named as the runner-up across the board, followed by Penguin Computing. In OCP Storage, respondents picked Quanta as the Market, Price, Reliability and Service & Support Leader. Second place for OCP Storage Market Leader went to Penguin Computing, along with leader awards for Performance and Innovation. SanDisk/Fusion-io was third in voting for OCP Storage Market Leader.

"Quanta and QCT were early leaders in the design, manufacturing and support of Open Compute hardware for a variety of customers," said Mike Yang, general manager, QCT. "Today, we offer the largest and most diverse lineup of OCP-compatible hardware, including servers, storage and integrated rack, all available in off-the-shelf SKUs that customers can order and deploy quickly, supported by our worldwide customer support network. It's the easiest, most reliable way to consume OCP designs."

- For Scale-out Object Storage Software, IT pros selected Red Hat in a leader sweep: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation. Red Hat's Storage Server commanded the votes, with Scality and Cleversafe finishing second and third, respectively, as Market Leader. "Red Hat is honored to receive recognition from the IT industry as the leader in scale-out object storage software," said Scott Clinton, senior director, product marketing, Storage and Big Data, Red Hat. "Red Hat Storage provides a comprehensive open, software-defined storage portfolio spanning physical, virtual, and cloud environments to help our enterprise customers rapidly build competitive advantage by leveraging the tangible value locked inside unstructured data."

- HP, one of three multi-category brand leadership champions this month (along with Quanta and Cisco), was the respondents' choice for both Dense Low-Power Microservers and Converged Systems for Virtualization. HP's Moonshot was the favorite for Dense Low-Power Microserver Market, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation, with AMD/SeaMicro scoring the Price title (and all-around runner-up leader, just ahead of Supermicro). In the Converged Systems for Virtualization survey, HP held onto all six leader awards (Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation) keeping NetApp's FlexPod and VCE's vBlock in the second and third Market Leader positions, accordingly.

"HP Moonshot systems are designed from the silicon on up, for specific applications and workloads. This enables HP to deliver highly efficient and economical compute solutions, which optimize the performance of the applications they are designed to support," said Susan Blocher, HP Moonshot Vice President of Marketing. "It is an honor to have HP Moonshot recognized as a leader in the high-density microserver market".

- A first-time brand survey for Converged Systems for Databases resulted in Oracle/Exadata standing out as the Market, Performance, Reliability and Innovation Leader. HP, the number two Market Leader (in front of VCE), was the IT professionals' pick for Service & Support, with NetApp given the award for Price.

"Oracle Exadata Database Machine is engineered to be the highest performing and most available platform for running Oracle Database because Oracle implements many database optimizations that are only possible by crossing all layers including database software, OS, drivers, firmware, network and storage. In contrast, general-purpose and converged systems can't be deeply optimized for databases or any workload in particular. Oracle is pleased to receive industry recognition for this innovative solution," said Tim Shetler, vice president product management, Oracle.

- Network powerhouse Cisco became the only vendor in these surveys to sweep two product categories: Low-Latency Ethernet Switch and WLAN Controllers & Access Points - with IT Pros honoring Cisco this way for the second straight year. Cisco took home the Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation Leader titles for Low-Latency Ethernet Switch. HP was the voters' second preference for Market Leader, followed by Arista. In the WLAN Controllers & Access Points category, Cisco earned overall leader for Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation. Aruba Networks finished as the runner-up in every category but one (Service & Support). HP placed third.

"Cisco is pleased to be recognized as a leader for low-latency switches and WLAN Controllers and Access Points," said Shashi Kiran, senior director of marketing, Cisco Data Center Solutions. "Both winning technologies address leading-edge customer concerns: the high-performing Cisco Nexus 3500 Series switch addresses the most demanding IT environments with latencies of 250 nanoseconds or less, while Cisco's wireless LAN family provides always-on mobile environments and is ushering in a new era of Internet of Things applications and productivity."

- Another back-to-back winner, Mellanox, topped the leader board again for Low-Latency Ethernet Adapters. Mellanox proved it is still is the company to beat with its Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation Leader honors this year. Intel, the 2011 brand survey Market Leader, placed in the number two position this year, ahead of QLogic.

"We are delighted and honored to be recognized by IT professionals as the leader in the data center Ethernet adapter market," said Gilad Shainer, vice president of market development at Mellanox Technologies. "Our 10 and 40GbE interconnect solutions are providing end users with critical features for today's cloud and Web 2.0 data centers: RDMA, low-latency, CPU efficiency, high performance and high density, low power and low cost, which enable the best return-on-investment."

- One more vendor scored repeat victories in these surveys: Citrix for Application Delivery Controllers. Citrix carried over its brand leadership from 2013 as a second-time Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation front-runner. F5 came in behind Citrix in all categories, with Riverbed garnering the third place Market Leader recognition.

"We are extremely honored to have been recognized by IT Brand Pulse, for the second year in a row, as the outright leader in the application delivery controller category across market, price, performance, reliability, service and support as well as innovation," said Graham Melville, senior director, product marketing, Cloud Networking Group at Citrix. "To have Citrix NetScaler with TriScale technology be recognized by customers as the best ADC is a testament to how Citrix strives as a company to offer the best user experience while enriching their ability to work and collaborate using apps and data on any device."

- In a year that low latency networking protocols and software platforms for distributed computing are being integrated into standard data center infrastructure, IT professionals were asked to choose who contributed most to Innovation in Scale-Out Computing for the Masses, 2012-2014. Microsoft/SMB Direct won the popular vote, followed by HP/Moonshot and Red Hat Storage Server.

"Microsoft is thrilled to be recognized by IT professionals for our leadership and innovations in scale-out computing," said Mike Schutz, General Manager, Microsoft Cloud Platform. "Because we build and operate some of the world's largest public cloud services at global scale, we are able to bring scale-out innovation from our cloud to our customers so they can achieve breakthrough performance and efficiency."

- In another category sweep, consistent storage winner EMC once again came out on top in an IT Brand Pulse leader survey by securing Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation accolades for Scale-out Object Storage Systems. While NetApp held a solid second place, HDS and Huawei locked in a tie for the third Market Leader spot.

- Also in the OCP categories, Intel flexed its brand muscles and, for the second year in a row, walked away with Market, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation Leader wins for OCP Server Processor. As the largest vote-getter in all of this month's brand surveys, Intel was thwarted from a category monopoly (again) by AMD, which captured the Price Leader title (as well as number two all-around).

IT Brand Leader Surveys
IT Brand Pulse awards are the symbols for brand leadership. Winners are voted by IT pros in surveys that are independent, non-sponsored research. The surveys are designed to measure the pulse of brand leadership in specific product categories. Within each product category, respondents choose the overall market leader, as well as the leader in price, performance, reliability, service and support, and innovation. Respondents are provided with a category description at the start of each product section, a randomized choice of vendor answers, and the ability to write-in a vendor, if not listed.

Respondents to our surveys have included (select list):
AT&T - Server Administrator/Architect; Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) - Storage Administrator/Architect; Boeing - Data Center Manager; Booz Allen Hamilton - Network Security Architect; CalPERS, State of CA - Network Administrator/Architect; Caterpillar - Server Administrator/Architect; Citigroup - Network Administrator/Architect; City of Los Angeles - IT Manager/Director; Delta Airlines - Server Administrator/Architect; Duke University - IT Manager/Director; EarthLink - Server Administrator/Architect; Environmental Protection Agency - Network Administrator/Architect; ExxonMobil - Network Administrator/Architect; Fermilab - Network Administrator/Architect; Ford Motor Company - Network Administrator/Architect; GE - IT Manager/Director; General Dynamics - Network Administrator/Architect; General Motors - Server Administrator/Architect; Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab - IT Manager/Director; JP Morgan - IT Manager/Director; Lockheed Martin - IT Manager/Director; Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) - Network Administrator/Architect; Lowe's - Storage Administrator/Architect; Mattel Inc.- IT Manager/Director; Morgan Stanley - Network Administrator/Architect; NASA - IT Manager/Director; National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) - Network Administrator/Architect; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - IT Manager/Director; Northrop Grumman - Network Administrator/Architect; Oppenheimer - Executive/Management; PepsiCo - Storage Administrator/Architect; Porsche Cars North America - Network Administrator/Architect; REI - Server Administrator/Architect; Sandia National Labs - Network Administrator/Architect; Shell - Storage Administrator/Architect; Social Security Administration (SSA) - Server Administrator/Architect; Stanford University - Network Administrator/Architect; Staples - Network Administrator/Architect; Target - IT Manager/Director; The University of Chicago - Server Administrator/Architect; Thomson Reuters -Server Administrator/Architect; T-Mobile - Data Center Manager; Transamerica - Storage Administrator/Architect; UBS - Executive/Management; UCLA - IT Manager/Director; United Airlines - Network Administrator/Architect; Universal Parks and Resort - IT Manager/Director; University Of Michigan- Data Center Manager; University of Michigan Medical School - IT Manager/Director; University of Notre Dame - Storage Administrator/Architect; USC - Network Administrator/Architect; Verizon - Network Administrator/Architect; Yale University - IT Manager/Director…among many others.

About IT Brand Pulse
IT Brand Pulse is a trusted source of research, data and analysis about private, public and hybrid cloud IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, networking and operating platforms. Learn more at www.itbrandpulse.com.

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