What Gartner’s 2020 Storage Magic Quadrant Reveals About the Future of Primary Storage

Gartner revised its outlook for external‑controller (ECB) storage in February 2020, cutting the total market size to $17 billion and lowering the five‑year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from –3.8% to –4.7% due to changing consumption models such as subscription purchases, public‑cloud adoption, and the rise of software‑defined storage (SDS), as well as tariff impacts.

Most data (>90%) will remain on server‑direct‑attached storage (DAS) or SDS/cloud by 2023, leaving ECB’s share in the single‑digit range. While all‑flash arrays (SSA) continue to grow, Gartner also reduced their five‑year growth estimate from 5.9% to 4.8%.

By 2023, SSA is expected to dominate primary storage with a 67.9% market share, while hybrid solutions shrink. In the primary‑storage segment, SSA will account for over 90% of capacity; secondary and backup storage will increasingly adopt hybrid configurations.

Gartner’s 2020 Primary Storage Magic Quadrant introduced a new layout: eight leaders, four challengers, one niche player, and no visionaries, indicating a mature market with little room for pure startups.

Compared with the 2019 edition, five vendors fell out of the quadrant – Synology, Infortrend, Western Digital (its primary‑storage business was sold to DDN), NEC, and Kaminario (now rebranded as Silk). The likely cause is that their primary‑storage sales did not meet the inclusion thresholds, possibly affected by the pandemic.

Inclusion criteria require an average selling price of at least $49,999, sales in at least two of the three regions (APAC, EMEA, North America), more than $50 million in primary‑storage revenue over the last four quarters, and at least 500 active customers in the mid‑size or large‑enterprise segment. Exclusion rules forbid bundled solutions, require standalone branding, and demand 24/7 enterprise‑grade support.

Gartner’s strategic assumptions predict that by 2025 at least 50% of enterprises will shift to an OPEX‑based storage consumption model (currently under 10%); by 2023 at least 20% will use cloud‑storage management tools to integrate on‑premises platforms with public cloud for backup and disaster‑recovery; and by 2025 at least 20% will adopt NVMe‑over‑Fabric (NVMe‑oF), which is now below 5%.

The market outlook shows ECB revenue falling 22.1% in 2020, with a modest 3.7% rebound in 2021. SSA adoption will keep rising, further eroding the ECB segment. By 2024, 69.3% of ECB revenue will stem from the SSA sub‑segment, up from 44.4% in 2019. Public‑cloud growth of 6.3% in 2020 accelerates the shift from on‑premises storage to cloud‑based solutions.

SSA vendors are investing in incremental features such as storage‑class memory (SCM) and NVMe‑oF, though these technologies remain expensive and not yet widely deployed. Enterprises are extending the life of existing SSA systems while vendors add software for tighter integration with major public‑cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure) and explore AI‑driven predictive maintenance to reduce support costs.

Among Chinese vendors, Huawei appears as a leader, Lenovo as a challenger, and Inspur moves from niche to challenger, showing overall progress in execution and vision.

Globally, Pure Storage shows the strongest gains, ranking first in two capability dimensions, while NetApp slipped slightly and other vendors made modest improvements.

Personal conclusion: the future of primary storage is all‑flash, positioning Pure Storage favorably despite recent earnings softness; ECB vendors face a shrinking market. Long‑term, distributed storage and SDS will dominate, but the residual ECB market will continue a competitive race against these emerging paradigms.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant remains the most influential benchmark in the storage industry.

Synology

Infortrend

Western Digital (primary storage sold to DDN)

NEC

Kaminario (now Silk)