April 23, 2008

Consolidate Storage Vendors To Reduce Complexity

More Companies Prefer To Buy Storage From A Single Vendor

by Andrew Reichman

with Stephanie Balaouras, Christine E. Atwood, Rachel A. Dines

Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

According to a Forrester survey, storage equipment and management software represents 10% of the IT hardware budget, and spending is expected to increase by 4% in 2008. Given the significance of this spending and the tenor of the economy these days, it's likely you're coming under pressure to cut overall storage costs. You may have tried to contain costs by forcing multiple incumbent vendors to continuously compete against each other, with price as the primary differentiator. This strategy can reduce prices and limit vendor lock-in, but it can also lead to management complexity and poor capacity utilization. Our survey data shows that over the past 12 months, more firms have bought their storage from a single vendor. While this might not be for everyone, it's worth serious consideration for your environment. Maybe you won't get the best price per gigabyte every time, but you'll probably save money in the long run because of simpler management, increased staff specialization, increased capacity utilization, and better customer service.

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