Gartner may not call them losers in its latest WAN Edge Infrastructure Magic Quadrant report, instead preferring the term “niche players,” but it may as well have.

The six vendors filling this lowly spot — Peplink, Nuage, Cradlepoint, Barracuda, FatPipe, and Riverbed — consistently ranked among the worst in all five use cases identified in Gartner’s Critical Capabilities for WAN Edge Infrastructure report.

According to Gartner, these vendors have either a complete or nearly complete product offering but have not shown the ability to transform the market or execute.

So what’s holding these vendors back?

According to Gartner, five of the six vendors suffered from poor market visibility and/or limited geographic reach. This, the report claims, has limited growth opportunities for the vendors.

“Few customers ask about Nuage via inquiry or searches on Gartner.com, which shows its limited visibility in the market compared to other vendors in this research,” analysts wrote.

But that sentiment wasn’t limited to Nuage. Riverbed is an established networking vendor with robust WAN optimization capabilities and strong name recognition.

“Riverbed is a well known brand in the networking space with a large base of customers that are targets to upgrade to SD-WAN,” the report reads.

However, Gartner warns Riverbed has lost market share over the past two years, driving a focus on adjacent markets.

Another challenge facing vendors is gaps in their respective product portfolios.

Here again, Riverbed is a prime example, having abandoned its own SD-WAN in favor of reselling Versa’s VOS platform.

And while Versa was one of the leading SD-WAN vendors in this year’s report, analysts cautioned that Riverbed’s reliance on the vendor leaves the company vulnerable and limits its control over product development.

Similarly, the report warned that Peplink lacked the rich SD-WAN and security features offered by its competitors; FatPipe was short on cloud features; Cradlepoint’s appliances were bandwidth constrained; and Barracuda’s artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and automation functionality was "limited."

And while Gartner didn’t call out any gaps in Nuage’s SD-WAN platform, analysts report the vendor’s customer experience scores were “below average” compared to competing vendors.

Despite falling into the lowest rank in Gartner’s annual report, many of the vendors have managed to carve out a niche for themselves.

For example, Cradlepoint, which specializes in cellular WAN connectivity, has managed to generate a strong following in retail, transportation, and public safety segments, Gartner reports. And following Ericsson’s acquisition of the vendor late last year, Gartner expects Cradlepoint will become more relevant in the enterprise networking arena in the years to come.

Gartner also highlighted Barracuda’s moves in the highly competitive secure access service edge (SASE) space, which were bolstered by the acquisition of zero-trust network access (ZTNA) vendor Fyde late last year.

Meanwhile, Riverbed remains a strong choice where WAN optimization and application visibility are paramount, the report found.