OBJECT Aug 25, 2026
Forrester's Wave: Object Storage Solutions Q2 2026 (covered by Blocks & Files, Aug 24) names four Leaders: NetApp (StorageGRID), Everpure, Nutanix and VAST Data — with Dell, Scality, AWS, Hitachi Vantara, HPE and Huawei as Strong Performers, and DDN plus Alibaba Cloud as Contenders. Notably, Cloudian, MinIO and Quantum weren't included at all; IBM and Oracle were evaluated out (no single object offering / cloud-only). Forrester analyst Brent Ellis frames the shift: object storage is moving from "cheap and deep" cold archive to an active primary platform — the de facto tier for Kubernetes, serverless, and AI pipelines — so decisions now hinge on operating-model fit and governance rather than raw durability claims. Inclusion required roughly $100M+ annual object-storage revenue and large-enterprise support track record.
The admin lesson: if you run ONTAP, StorageGRID is the path of least resistance into that active-archive world — FabricPool tiers to it natively and ILM policies handle cross-site copy counts. But a Leader badge doesn't decide your S3 gateway strategy; test retrieval latency from your actual consumers (backup apps, analytics) before committing a tiering policy you can't easily unwind.