1. Info-Tech Research Group1 Purchase Storage Without Buyer’s Remorse Get best practice advice that leverages the buying experience of your IT peers.

2. Info-Tech Research Group2 Storage is a big ticket item that often only gets purchased every three to five years. Many buyers focus on capital costs and rely on vendors for scoping of requirements leading to overspending and buyer’s remorse. Introduction IT leaders and procurement staff considering investment or re-investment in enterprise storage products and services. Enterprise storage buyers looking for tips and strategies for getting the most out of the vendor engagement. Establish current and future requirements. Engage with vendors – from requests for information and developing a shortlist through to scoring alternatives and negotiating on price. This Research Is Designed For:This Research Will Help You:

3. Info-Tech Research Group3 Executive Summary Storage purchases are challenging projects with significant line items that require careful planning, vendor evaluation, and frugal negotiations. Still, over 75% of organizations are dissatisfied with some aspect of their most recent purchase. Use this report to ensure that the solution meets your needs at lowest possible total costs. Effort assembling current and future storage requirements are among the biggest influencers of driving satisfaction for a storage purchase. Organizations that do not conduct this activity fully receive inaccurate or inconsistent proposals from vendors. Determine Requirements Maintain contending vendors throughout the process to ensure pricing stays competitive. Negotiate on components separately, and guard against future hardware and maintenance hikes. Successful and unsuccessful storage purchasers spent the same effort on negotiating cost, yet successful organizations were much more satisfied with total costs of hardware, support and maintenance, professional services, and adding capacity. Establish a Negotiation Strategy Evaluate the storage ecosystem to determine the best method to get storage from the vendor to your loading dock. In engaging vendors, map your strategic requirements against the features and functionality offered by the top vendors. Develop a Vendor Engagement Strategy

4. Info-Tech Research Group4 Storage purchases are hard to get right and leave most IT groups dissatisfied, especially on training and total costs Storage is expensive. When storage buyers (and CFOs) think storage they think dollar signs. Storage takes a huge chunk out of the capital and operational budget for IT. Overpay for storage and it may have the side effect of pulling funds from other strategic initiatives. Buying storage is complicated. Organizations that are most satisfied with their storage purchase spent comparable effort negotiating on cost than dissatisfied buyers. However, knowing where to focus negotiation efforts and leveraging best practices from peers will lead to greater success in driving down costs. Storage is an impactful investment. Storage is a purchase that will live with the organization for three to five years or more, and has the potential to enable or prevent future initiatives. It is critical to carefully evaluate all aspects of alternatives to select the vendor that provides technology, training, implementation and support capabilities that best meet your organization’s needs at the lowest TCO. Over 75% of organizations reported dissatisfaction with at least some aspect of their storage purchasing, and 87% of those listed cost as a factor. Percent of storage buyers dissatisfied with the following aspect of their purchase Source: Info-Tech Research Group N= 81

5. Info-Tech Research Group5 Make the time to evaluate multiple vendors’ options; relying on your reseller to provide the best option is a mistake Almost half (44%) of storage buyers purchased storage from a different vendor than they did in their last deal; it’s more common than you think. Be proactive in surveying multiple product offerings. Organizations that routinely look at solutions from multiple vendors are more critical of their current storage vendor’s product lineup when a new purchase is in order. Ask for a view the vendor’s roadmap; it’s important to find the best solution to fit your current and future requirements, no matter the vendor. Don’t wait for your vendor to fail. Organizations that switch vendors because of a shortcoming in their vendor’s support offerings or a notorious reputation ultimately live through a negative situation. These situations are avoidable through due diligence and a formal requirements gather and RFP process. Don’t expect resellers to push you to alternatives. It is not in a reseller’s best interests to push you to switch vendors, as vendors do not look favorably on resellers that routinely move business to other vendors. In addition, resellers get higher discounts from vendors based on their sales numbers. Especially with small to mid-sized resellers it does not make sense to spread business across many vendors. Recent storage buyers ranked their drivers to switching vendors in their last purchase st Ranked Driver th Ranked Driver

6. Info-Tech Research Group6 Focus efforts on assessing requirements, surveying the market, evaluating vendors, and negotiating the contract Buying storage is a successive process that builds from assessing current and future requirements, through vendor evaluation, to negotiations. 59% 49% 65% 73% 63% 37% 46% 47% 59% 81% 79% 63% 50% 38% Most Satisfied (top third) Least Satisfied (bottom third) Evaluate Vendors Failing to devote sufficient efforts to evaluating the market may result in omission of the best fit solution. Assess Requirement s Determining requirements for the purchase sets the stage for evaluation. Poor requirements gathering often leads to RFPs that are out of budget or missing components leading the buyer to adjust and request re-bids, or rule out vendors too early in the process. A successful purchase results from a solid understanding and communication of requirements, matched with selection of the best-fit vendor at lowest possible cost. 1 2 3 Negotiate Minimal Effort (0%)Colossal Effort (100%) Source: Info-Tech Research Group, N= 76

7. Info-Tech Research Group7 What’s in this Section:Sections: Determine Requirements Engage with Vendors Establish a Negotiation Strategy Establish a comprehensive set of current and future requirements to ensure the storage purchase process starts off right. Use Info-Tech’s RFP Template as a starting point for a consistent set of criteria to evaluate vendors.

8. Info-Tech Research Group8 Right-size performance & capacity needs for the RFP by assessing service level requirements based on business needs Criticality Importance and tolerance for downtime Criticality Importance and tolerance for downtime Performance Maximum computing needed Performance Maximum computing needed Growth Long-term planning Growth Long-term planning + + The current capacity requirements (CPUs, network connections, I/0 channels) that the app needs to perform at a level inline with user expectations. Base level performance requirement; what is the worst acceptable response time or throughput? Expected growth in demand from the app or service over the next three years. Negative growth from moving systems to a SaaS offering. Accounts for uncertainty. Current importance of the app or service to the business. Impact of loss of service or poor performancet on the business. Original configuration requirements from app deployment. Performance testing and application performance monitoring. Physical to virtual machine (P2V) migration planning tools. Needs assessment for disaster recovery and business continuity planning. Business impact analysis (BIA) for disaster recovery. Predicted growth in business can help predict growth in transactional processes. Monitor historical utilization to build a projection of future utilization. Scope and specify your requirements based on business needs, to help the vendor recommend a solution. What this includesWhere to get it For help on assessing current and future requirements and developing a roadmap, refer to Build an Applications Roadmap and Build an Infrastructure Roadmap.Build an Applications RoadmapBuild an Infrastructure Roadmap

9. Info-Tech Research Group9 Devote significant up-front effort to establishing current and future requirements to ensure project success Begin the process nine months in advance to reserve sufficient time to meet with application owners, administrators, and business stakeholders. Up front effort yields the greatest results. Satisfaction isn’t driven by effort on the RFP, it is driven by effort putting together the requirements that go into it. Assessing requirements should account for the majority of time spent on the project. Set up meeting with stakeholders to verify requirements. Approach applications owners and database admins with IT’s estimates around current requirements. Solicit feedback and ask for growth expectations and planned future initiatives to help future-proof the purchase. Consider your virtualization strategy. Consult with the virtualization admin to determine anticipated increases in virtualization and important integration requirements for the hypervisor and management software. Determine storage approach. Most solutions are either extremely user friendly, or very customizable. Usually storage admins feel very strongly one way or another. Consult with your team to strategize on requirements in this area. Two vendors we were looking at proposed combinations of NAS and tiered storage. While I thought they were great concepts, I believed they were better suited for large file shares and email systems. I was not convinced that they could support our CIS application and Database environment, and thus we purchased a traditional SAN storage system. - James R. Harding, B.A., Manager, Technology Services & Support, Enwin Utilities Ltd. Minimal Effort (0%)Colossal Effort (100%)

10. Info-Tech Research Group10 Info-Tech Research Group Helps IT Professionals To: Sign up for free trial membership to get practical solutions for your IT challenges www.infotech.com Quickly get up to speed with new technologies Make the right technology purchasing decisions – fast Deliver critical IT projects, on time and within budget Manage business expectations Justify IT spending and prove the value of IT Train IT staff and effectively manage an IT department “Info-Tech helps me to be proactive instead of reactive – a cardinal rule in a stable and leading edge IT environment. - ARCS Commercial Mortgage Co., LP Toll Free: 1-888-670-8889