Back to Gartner Cool Vendors in Storage Technologies From 2010 to 2017

Gartner started to publish its Cool Vendors marketing tool a few years ago for many IT categories. We decided to check the Storage Technologies lists published since 2010.

Some of these companies disappeared, others got acquired and the rest are still alive hopefully. Did Gartner really find some gems and anticipate technology waves, miss others or just follow big trends, we let you judge.

Years	Companies	Acquisitions	Shutdowns
2017	Cohesity, Elastifile, Igneous, Komprise, Portworx	-	-
2016	Datrium, Hedvig, Minio, Peaxy, Rubrik	-	-
2015	DataGravity, Infinidat, Infinio, Maxta, Storiant	-	Storiant
2014	Condusiv, Exablox, PernixData, Zadara	Exablox by StorageCraft in 2017, PernixData by Nutanix in 2016	-
2013	Ctera, Delphix, Panzura, Pure Storage, Scality	-	-
2012	Actifio, Amplidata, Druva, iWave Software, Skyera	Amplidata by HGST/WD in 2015, iWave Software by EMC in 2013, Skyera by HGST/WD in 2014	-
2011	Datacastle, Kaminario, Mezeo, Nimble Storage, RainStor, Violin Memory	Mezeo by Zimbra in 2014, Nimble Storage by HPE in 2017, RainStor by Teradata in 2014	-
2010	Aptare, Atrato, Avere Systems, Pliant, StorSimple	Pliant by SanDisk in 2011, StorSimple by Microsoft in 2012	Atrato

If you consider these companies and their role in the industry, these eight reports have followed and anticipated some trends such cloud storage and associated gateway, file storage, SSD/flash and NVMe, object storage, new data protection approach and of course software-defined storage.
A few statistics based on this table:

• 40 companies were listed on this report, two are dead, Atrato and Storiant (5%), and 10 got acquired (25%).
• 3 companies has made an IPO (Nimble Storage, Pure Storage and Violin Memory) but only Pure is still independent, Nimble got acquired recently by HPE for $1.2 billion and Violin has suffered from different tough episodes.
• 3 (7.5%) companies have Israeli roots (Elastifile, Infinidat and Kaminario), 2 (5%) are European, and the rest, 35, are US ones (87.5%).
• 70% of companies have 4 years or less when they joined Gartner's report. In details, 5% have one year, 13% two years, 23% three years and 30% four years.
• 27 (67.5%) companies have participated to The IT Press Tour and 19 (47.5%) before Gartner put them on the radar, that perfectly illustrates the role and impact of the tour for the visibility of these companies.