Johannesburg, 02 Dec 2010
If there is one area of the IT environment where cost is a critical determinant of value, it is storage. Of course, lower cost shouldn't come at the expense of reliability and performance, the other two essential members of the storage triumvirate. But with constantly escalating capacity requirements, which remain unchecked even through a severe recession, if you're not considering the cost of storage, you're going to pay dearly.
That's according to Mike Styer, country manager of NetApp. “Is enterprise storage 'just a bunch of disks'? Certainly not. Storage today has to be purpose designed for efficiency and performance. It has to be virtualised.
“Whether you're operating on the public cloud or are experimenting with private clouds, storage is the one area where it is a non-negotiable to drive up utilisation of in South Africa. The reason is simple: if you don't, you will need more capacity and you will be paying too much for your storage.”
With that illustrating the requirement for low-cost storage, Styer makes another point. “Any provider of cloud services has to have a highly efficient infrastructure behind that service. Many, if not most, offer services on a 'free' basis, with limited capacity and functionality; upgrades which offer further capacity are often priced as little as a couple of rand. Unless you have low-cost, high performance infrastructure, this business model is dead in the water.”
Pointing to some revenue and capacity facts that illustrate why he believes the South African CIO is paying too much for storage, Styer says it's a straightforward inference. “NetApp is ranked sixth by International Data Corporation in terms of revenue. But it is ranked second in terms of capacity.
“That should tell you something as simple as it is profound: we are shipping more storage terabytes for every rand than any other competitor. Put even plainer: if you're not installing NetApp to take care of your storage requirements, you're paying too much,” Styer says.
Just as important, however, he believes any CIO should ask themselves what they are receiving for the premium they are paying for kit from other vendors. “Is it for reliability? Our systems are based on RAID 6. Is it for performance? Our systems consistently top benchmarks. Is it on the basis of what the analysts say? NetApp is positioned in the leader's quadrant for midrange and high-end modular disk arrays by Gartner. Software? Our deduplication solutions have saved a proven Exabyte of capacity for businesses using our storage.”
Or is it marketing? He concedes that NetApp hasn't blown its trumpet quite as loud as other vendors have, choosing instead to invest more in research and development and less on advertising and related expenses.
It's a bold statement, but Styer is adamant. “Our storage performs better and costs less than that of major competitors. Unless you're implementing NetApp, you're paying too much. And if you don't believe it, I challenge you to investigate further.”
And a last word of caution: Just don't let the CFO find out.
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