There are now 14 AFA players, some dedicated and others with hybrid array/filer alternatives. They can be placed in three groups. The eight incumbents, long-term enterprise storage array and filer suppliers, are: Dell, DDN, Hitachi Vantara, HPE, Huawei, IBM, NetApp and Pure Storage. Pure is the newest incumbent and classed as such by us because of its public ownership status and sustained growth rate. It is not a legacy player, though, as it was only founded in 2009, just 14 years ago.

An updated AFA history graphic - we first used this graphic in 2019 - shows how these incumbents have adopted AFA technology both by developing it in-house and acquiring AFA startups. We have added Huawei to the chart as an incumbent; it is a substantial AFA supplier globally.

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