We all like lists that rank who is cool, best in class or top score in a buyer’s guide. Every year, Gartner releases their prized “Cool Vendor” selection. But is it just vanity for the vendor selected or is there actual, tangible value to the prospective customer that makes you care?

We believe one significant difference about the Cool Vendor Report compared to other reports is Gartner does a deep-dive examination of compelling vendors across the technology landscape, then upon selecting their “cool vendors” for the year, they reveal their analysis, why the vendor is cool, challenges the vendor faces and who should care.

Of all the technology companies on the landscape, Gartner chose to highlight four this year in the area of storage technologies, providing research into their innovative products and/or services.

When we were brainstorming our flagship product V-locity, we spoke to hundreds customers and we heard a common theme – performance problems in virtual environments whereby users were buying lots of hardware to solve an inherent software problem per the “I/O blender” effect.

As we dug in, a clearer picture emerged. We’ve become conditioned to medicating performance problems with hardware. And why not? In the past, performance gains were growing by 4X to 8X every ten years. Hardware was cheap. The price performance continued to improve every two years. And inertia, doing business as usual was low risk – buy more hardware because we’ve always done it that way and the financial folks understand the approach.

When we evangelize the problem of I/O growing faster than hardware could cost-effectively keep up and the need for a software only approach to easily cure it, we found the problem and solution resonated with many customers – webinar attendance ranged from 400 to 2,000 attendees. And while we are fast approaching 2,000 corporate installations, there are still customers wondering why they have not heard of the I/O problem we solve and our innovative way to solve it. They want some proof.

This is where the Gartner Cool Vendor report is helpful to IT users and their organizations. The reports help focus and reduce the learning curve on the relevant problems in IT, the innovative companies that warrant further investigation and highlight interesting new products and services that address issues in emerging trends.

The Cool Vendor Report can be read in the time it takes to have a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, the Cool Vendor Reports are one of two top reports Gartner clients download.

Now for our vanity plug, Condusiv is listed in the Cool Vendor Report titled “Cool Vendors in Storage Technologies, 2014.” This is usually only available to Gartner clients, but we paid for distribution rights so you could read it for free. Download Gartner’s Cool Vendors in Storage Technologies Report