Post by Justin Vashisht (thanks) on HP/3PAR and there positioning in the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
September 2, 2010 will go down as one of the most defining days in HP Storage history. On that day 3Par officially accepted HP’s bid to acquire them at $33 a share which forced Dell, who started the acquisition talks with an offer of $18 share to tap out. A few months later Dell would acquire Compellent. In the weeks that followed after the HP/3Par announcement critics across the internet began to question HP’s sanity for spending 2.35 billion dollars on a little known company from Fremont California with 300 employees. What was the value in 3Par and how on earth would HP make there money back? At first glance 3Par was just another storage company who’s product line seemingly overlapped HP’s. Well, it is said that Mark Hurd, HP’s former CEO was not very friendly when it came to R&D funding. 3Par had Thin Provisioning technology down cold and HP wanted it and wanted it immediately to get its claws into the exploding cloud market. At that time HP’s flagship SAN was the XP series, which was just a nice HP logo slapped on top of a Hitachi SAN. Below that was the HP EVA series which was not doing too well against EMC and Netapp. HP felt it needed to revamp its entire storage line and in the last few months it has already started paying off for HP. One has to think if HP even realized that success would come this quick. Let’s look at some of the recent highlights that have come from the HP/3Par relationship.
HP/3PAR IN THE GARTNER MAGIC QUADRANT
Gartner, which at the core is an information technology research and advisory firm is very well respected in the industry. Many senior IT leaders such as CIO/CTO’s rely on Gartner to help them make decisions on choosing the right vendors and products. Being able to quickly see who are the industry leaders and visionaries in a certain space saves valuable time that would otherwise be spent on researching each vendor. Investors can also use Gartner to help understand the market in a clear and compact way. Gartner’s claim to flame is the way it visually represents its analysis. Two methods are used, the “Hype Cycle” and “Magic Quadrant” charts. The Hype Cycle visually shows the maturity, adoption, and social application of the specific technology. The Magic Quadrant provides a visual qualitative analysis into a market and its direction, maturity and participants. In a Magic Quadrant report you can expect to see where a firm sits in regards to being a leader, challenger, visionary, or nice player. Here is a breakdown of each category you will see on the MQ diagram.
-Leaders score higher on both criteria; the ability to execute and completeness of vision. Typically larger industry developed businesses with vision and potential for expansion.
-Challengers score higher the ability to execute and lower on the completeness of vision. Typically larger, settled businesses with minimal future plans for that industry.
-Visionaries score lower on the ability to execute and higher on the completeness of vision. Typically smaller companies that are unloading their planned potential.
-Niche players score lower on both criteria: the ability to execute and completeness of vision. Typically new additions to the Magic Quadrant, or market fledglings.
Read on here
