Gartner Inc. has released its latest Magic Quadrant for general-purpose disk arrays, and it shows that the newly merged Dell EMC is out in front, with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Hitachi Data Systems Corp. snapping at its heels.

That Dell EMC is top of the list is no big surprise. EMC commanded pole position in Gartner’s 2015 Magic Quadrant, after all. But it would appear that Dell EMC’s closest rivals HPE and HDS have actually made better progress over the last year, because the gap between them and the leader has narrowed somewhat.

The leader’s box is actually a very crowded place, with eight vendors in total vying for prominence. Following the top three come NetApp Inc. and Dell Technologies Inc., with IBM Corp. not far behind. Next up is China’s Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., a new entrant to the leader’s box that rose up all the way from “challenger” status one year ago, and proudly announced its progress in a press release. Nimble Storage rounded out the leaders.

Elsewhere, two other companies, Quantum Corp. and Infinidat, both made progress in the last 12 months. The former broke into the quadrant for the first time, making it all the way up to the “challengers” box, while the latter moved up into the “visionaries” section.

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