NetApp hits a bull’s eye on the GigaOm Radar for Scale-Out File Storage

It’s generally accepted that when it comes to artificial intelligence and machine learning, more data means better, more accurate models. Modern large language models, for example, are trained on tens of billions--sometimes even hundreds of billions--of parameters.

As more and more organizations recognize the value of unstructured data for insights, decision making, and innovation, scale-out storage has become the default. Unstructured data represents up to 90% of data stored in enterprise infrastructures. And it’s growing between 50% and 65% year over year as data pours in to feed the insatiable demand from big data analytics and AI and ML.

The majority of today’s large AI models depend on powerful and efficient systems for scale-out file storage (SOFS). The 2023 GigaOm Radar for Scale-Out File Storage (announced at the end of 2023) demonstrates that NetApp continues to cement our position as the leader in SOFS and the storage of choice for AI and data lakes.

This year’s Radar shows NetApp clearly in the Leaders ring, with our closest competitor a distant second. NetApp was also the only vendor to be awarded exceptional scores across the report’s Key Criteria and Evaluation Metrics. Even startups that were born in the cloud era and are focused solely on scale-out NAS are getting B grades and minuses.

I almost feel bad for them. The scale-out file storage market has been around for decades, and NetApp has been there since the start. We defined and built the NAS industry nearly 30 years ago, and we continue to innovate scale-out NAS for unstructured file-based data management at speed and scale across the hybrid multicloud.

In fact, NetApp is the only vendor closest to the center circle on both the GigaOm Radar for Scale-Out File Storage and the GigaOm Radar for High-Performance Cloud File Storage. Our traditional on-premises competitors, like Pure, Dell, and HP are literally not even on “the Radar” for Cloud File Storage. The on-premises SOFS market is certainly more crowded, yet NetApp dominates both with the best solution for scale-out file on-premises and in the cloud—without sacrifices. It’s like peanut butter and jelly. Good on their own. Together, they’re the breakfast of champions.

GigaOm calls out NetApp^® solutions as one of our strengths:

Strengths: NetApp provides broad portfolio options to implement and consume a modern scale-out file system solution based on ONTAP with a complete enterprise-grade feature set, flexible deployment models, and ubiquitous service availability across public clouds. NetApp BlueXP offers next-level management and orchestration capabilities complemented by a host of SaaS-based data services, simplifying data storage and data management at scale, regardless of the chosen deployment model.

Even our challenges are complimentary:

Challenges: NetApp’s rich and comprehensive ecosystem (in terms of management and advanced services) may be intimidating. To address this concern, NetApp is progressively consolidating its management and advanced data services capabilities to simplify the user experience.

We’d like to express our appreciation to GigaOm. We know that they dig deep into the technology and take the time to truly understand how it works. And what they’ve said, time and again, is that no one else but NetApp has the credentials or the bonafides to take on the massive scalability, management, privacy, and governance challenges that today’s unstructured data repositories pose for today’s AI, Kubernetes, and data lakes. We’ve been at it for 30 years, but we’re just getting started.

Read the report: GigaOm Radar for Scale-Out File Storage