Defining the soft costs
by David Merrill on March 4, 2009
I came across this recent article from ThinkStorage on the less tangible types of TCO costs. They have clearly outlined 3 or 4 of the 33 types of costs that HDS has characterized over the years. I like (and agree with) the closing comment:
Avoid the trap: When comparing two storage systems, don’t fall prey to evaluating only the metrics that stare you in the face and measure easily. Do all you can to explore the less tangible cost factors. The results may surprise you.
There are many soft or hidden surprises in storage ownership costs: performance, time to provision, scalability etc. In today’s economy though, hard costs are king, and the savior of hard costs gets the bigger prize. Here’s how I rank the hard costs:
1. CAPEX avoidance by reclaiming space (virtualize, thin provision, de-dupe, archive)
2. Waste Reduction (see recent Storage Architect post)
3. Migration cost elimination or reduction (virtual method)
4. License fee reduction or re-structuring (combining dynamic tiers with virtualization)
5. Power/Space/Cooling
