Inside System Storage -- by Tony Pearson

Today, Gartner, Inc. has IBM Positioned in Leader Quadrant for Storage Resource Management and SAN Management Software.

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted concept by Gartner, representing a two-by-two grid that ranks various offerings from different vendors. Ideally, vendors want their products in the upper right "Leaders" quadrant. Yahoo Finance reports:

According to Gartner, Inc., "Leaders have the highest combined measures of an ability to execute and a completeness of vision. They have the most comprehensive and scalable products. They have a proven track record of financial performance and an established market presence. In terms of vision, they are perceived as thought leaders, having well-articulated plans for ease of use, how to address scalability and product breadth. For vendors to have long-term success, they must plan to address the expanded market requirements for change management and root-cause and performance analysis. Leaders must not only deliver to the current market requirements, which continue to change, but they also need to anticipate and deliver on future requirements. A cornerstone for leaders is the ability to articulate how these requirements will be addressed as part of their vision for resource management. As a group, leaders can be considered a part of most new purchase proposals, and they have high success rates in winning new business."

I have seen other quadrants used to help explain different market segments, such as the one used in this 40-minute video Guy Kawasaki’s Art of the Start speech at TiECon 2006.

To the current architects and developers of Productivity Center, well done!

technorati tags: IBM, TotalStorage, Productivity Center, Gartner, Magic Quadrant, storage resource, SRM, SAN, management, software, Guy Kawasaki, TieCon