Big changes in latest GigaOm Unstructured Data Management Radar report

GigaOm has issued v6 of its Unstructured Data Management Radar report with dramatic changes from last year’s issue.

The 2026 report evaluates 23 Unstructured Data Management (UDM) suppliers and was written by analyst James Brown, who replaced last year’s Walt Whitman. It compares supplier “offerings against the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) outlined in the companion Key Criteria report.” 

As a reminder, the Radar report graphic locates suppliers in a 2D concentric circular space, with an outside Entrant ring, a middle Challenger ring, and an inner Leader ring, with closeness to the central bullseye indicating a higher rating in terms of overall value. This circular space is divided into four quadrants by two orthogonal axes running through the bullseye. A horizontal one runs from Feature Play to Platform Play, and a vertical one spans a Maturity to Innovation range. The 22 suppliers are located in one of the three rings and one of the four quadrants, with colored arrows depicting the speed of their progress, from forward mover, to fast mover to outperformer.

There are 11 leaders in the latest report and 12 challengers, as can be seen in the 2026 Radar diagram:

And here is the 2025 version for comparison:

Both charts are chock full of suppliers, 22 in 2025 and 23 this year. It takes a while to notice the changes. Look for example at Panzura, which was top right quadrant challenger in 2026 and lower right quadrant leader in 2025. That’s a considerable change in the backwards direction. So too is Seagate which was a challenger in 2025 and has been excluded in 2026.

That got us thinking and so we listed the suppliers and highlighted the changes in a table:

Some of the changes are unexpected. Atempo, although bought by HorizonH since its inclusion in 2025, still sells its Lina, Miria, and Tina products. Ditto Datadobi with its StorageMap product and other UDM functionality. Why HDD supplier Seagate was ever included in 2025 is a mystery, so its subsequent exclusion is no surprise. 

The evaluation of Hammerspace is odd. It has energetically developed its Global Data Environment offering since 2025, particularly with respect to AI, yet it is deemed to have gone backwards, as well as slowing its status from outperformer to fast mover.

Object storage supplier Scality is included for the first time and that seems odd as its UDM functionality is restricted to object storage, Scality's in particular. StrongLInk supplied its offering last year and is only now included in this Radar report. Data protecting and cyber-resilience suppliers Druva and Rubrik are included for the first time, both as leaders. They only manage data in their backups and, if you are going to include suppliers like them, then surely Commvault should be included as well.

As we suggested last year, there is a thought that GigaOm has cast its UDM supplier list too wide. Backup, cyber-resilience suppliers can arguably be excluded as can object storage vendors. We would expect a UDM supplier to be focused on unstructured data management and not treat it as a side aspect of their core, non-UDM, product offering.

Analyst James Brown told us: "The downward shift in certain vendor scores reflects a market-wide "deflation" that led us to recalibrate our grading curve to address a more mature, demanding landscape. We raised the bar significantly to reflect the current realities of enterprise data management. Many features that were previously considered key differentiators have been reclassified as foundational "Table Stakes”, for example." 

"The other major driver for these changes is the shift in how UDM is being utilized in the enterprise. The market has moved beyond traditional UDM and is now operating as a foundational AI Control Plane for data. Because of this, our new key differentiator is "Generative AI Data Curation" and the implementation of active, predictive intelligence." 

GigaOm's Jon Collins, VP of Engagement and Field CTO,  told us: "We’re overhauling our research process right now and part of the new process is to review each topic relative to similar or overlapping topics. We haven’t historically done this within the process, which means each analyst would operate within the bounds of each report — the new process should enable us to see how we cover the space as a whole, as well as the specifics of the topic."