10. Unity

EMC in the spring made the last big splash of its life as an independent company when it introduced its Unity unified all-flash storage array priced to do battle with Nimble Storage and Pure Storage. The Unity solution combines file, block and object storage capabilities and carries prices starting at $20,000, putting it squarely in the mid-market, where Nimble and Pure have the most traction. Coincidently, the mid-market is also where Dell has traditionally been strong. "There is going to be a lot of people at Pure that are going to sit up and take notice," an EMC exec said. "This is huge for the channel." Partners praised the timing of Unity's introduction, which came as demand for flash-based object storage began to gain traction in the market.