Storage solutions provider DataDirect Networks is touting a new survey by Pacific Crest Securities that ranked it as one of the top two strategic hardware supplies for big data.

The research firm reports that nearly a fourth of the executives it surveys, 24 percent pointed at DataDirect as their number one choice for hardware that is specifically designed to support big data environments. Even more notable is that DDN got more votes than EMC, NetApp and Dell, according to the paper.

From the report:

“DDN is one of the most unique companies in the storage industry,” said David Vellante, Chief Research Officer at Wikibon.org. “DDN has been engineering solutions to large data problems for over a decade, well before the term Big Data was conceived…DDN’s recognition as a major player in Big Data is impressive and we would expect the company to accelerate its momentum in this space as the demand to ingest, process, store and distribute massive data sets escalates.”

One of the newest products that DataDirect released into the market is DirectMon, a software-based management platform that adds more transparency and provisioning capabilities to a number of select storage systems.

Pacific Crest’s latest report is a big PR boost for DataDirect, but at the same time the company is also facing increased competition.

EMC recently announced a major investment in China that, through a long-term partnership with Lenovo, will expand the vendor’s sales channel in the region. The alliance is expected to generate billions in revenue, and will gain both firms a head start in this emerging market  which is starting to adopt some of the trends we’re seeing in IT today.

SolidFire also had an update recently – the flash storage provider it landed a deal with Calligo.