The Storage Economist

I am working from my remote office in Moscow this week, and a customer meeting today with a large TELCO reminded me to post this lesson. Storage architectures have the best and longest impact on storage TCO than any other single activity. The customer meeting this morning reminded me of this fact because they did [...]

I am skipping around a bit, this is actually lesson #6, but I came across a good tip today from a Glasshouse consultant that supports my lesson on reducing storage TCO. With this good lead-in, we will talk about the next area to invest in to reduce storage TCO.

Sorry if I get a 70′s disco song stuck in your head, but I am seeing many more companies use side-by side TCO and storage cost (not price) analysis in marketing. Here is a  paper from the Register comparing Netapp FAS6070 against EVA and Clariion. Another analyst view of TCO from ITcentrix talking about TagmaStore [...]

As mentioned earlier, there are 6 popular activities or investments to reduce OPEX costs in Storage. This lesson focuses on storage area networks. SANs (in the broad sense of the acronym) can reduce storage infrastructure costs over time. I do not want to imply that FC is the only type of SAN, but in the [...]

In my white paper on Storage Economics, we discuss the several activities or initiatives that IT departments can undertake to reduce storage OPEX. These activities fall into a range of effort and paybacks, as depicted in this graphic.

From Computerworld, a BLOG from Jerri Ledford  and an associated article from Jim Damoulakis reiterate the truth that purchase price is just a fraction of the storage total cost of ownership. My work has lead me to estimate that price is 1/5 the total cost. Gartner claims the ratio to be 1:7. Either way, IT [...]

I read a BLOG from the Lone Sysadmin talking about sunk costs. See my comment to this blog about differentiating sunk costs from ongoing OPEX costs that are generated from investments. Beware of sunk cost paralysis. Better to look at the OPEX costs and cash flow that emanate from the storage infrastructure. If you have [...]

Publications Storage Economics: Identifying and Reducing Operating Expenses in the Storage Infrastructure

Perhaps you have read a few of my posts, or have read my white paper, and think that IT economics or storage economics is too complex, or that you need a degree in finance to make sense of it. Fear not, take comfort in simplicity! This simplicity I call ‘fag-pack economics’. Now don’t jump to [...]

A great article from SearchStorage about cost management and storage purchase costs. This supports our message on storage economics that price does not equal cost. What you pay for storage may only represent 1/5 the total cost of ownership. Gartner supports this purchase-to-ownership ratio as well.