Market research firm Forrester features only 12 vendors in its latest Object Storage Wave report, excluding well-known industry players including Cloudian, MinIO and Quantum.
Titled The Forrester Wave: Object Storage Solutions, Q2 2026, the report categorizes vendors into three tiers. It names four Leaders: NetApp (StorageGRID), Everpure, Nutanix and VAST Data. Six vendors are rated Strong Performers, namely Dell, Scality, AWS, Hitachi Vantara, HPE and Huawei. Two providers fall into the Contenders category: DDN and Alibaba Cloud. Vendor positioning is visualized in the official Forrester Wave diagram.
Forrester Object Storage Wave Q2 2026 diagram.
Forrester analyst Brent Ellis highlighted a clear industry shift: “Object storage is evolving from low-cost, high-capacity cold storage into an active primary infrastructure platform. Cloud-native workloads such as serverless computing and Kubernetes rely heavily on object storage, which is emerging as the standard storage foundation for AI operations.”
Ellis further noted that enterprise buying priorities have shifted: “Object storage purchasing decisions no longer focus primarily on basic durability guarantees. Instead, buyers prioritize how well object platforms align with enterprise operational frameworks, AI strategic roadmaps and industry compliance requirements.” He added that the evaluation criteria were tailored to reflect modern market demands, focusing on vendor capabilities to support AI-native workloads while enabling secure, compliant and well-governed enterprise data assets amid rapid market transformation.
The report marks two vendors as ineligible for evaluation: IBM and Oracle, bringing the total assessed vendor pool to 14. IBM was ruled out due to the absence of a standalone dedicated object storage solution, while Oracle was excluded for offering object storage solely via public cloud services with no on-premises or hybrid alternatives. Notably, AWS and Hitachi Vantara opted out of the full formal evaluation process, so their assessments were completed by Forrester analysts via desk-based secondary research.
By comparison, GigaOm’s June Object Storage Radar report covered 27 vendors in total, demonstrating Forrester’s far stricter inclusion thresholds. Forrester’s participation rules require vendors to generate a minimum of $100 million in annual revenue from object storage products, possess a proven track record of serving large enterprise clients, and be frequently shortlisted by enterprise buyers during pre-purchase evaluations. DataCore, vendor of the Swarm object storage solution, was also excluded from this Wave assessment.
Footnote
Forrester’s Wave framework adopts a square coordinate layout with two axes: vertical axis for current product capabilities and horizontal axis for strategic strength. Two concentric quarter circles divide the space into three tiered zones from left to right: Contenders, Strong Performers and Leaders, with each evaluated vendor positioned accordingly based on its overall performance score.
Beijing Qianxing Jietong Technology Co., Ltd.
Sandy Yang/Global Strategy Director
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