The Storage Economist

Lately, people have asked me about the difference of ROI and ROA, both techniques that we use in defining storage economics. Here is my IT-econ perspective.

We have been showing clients for years how Storage Virtualization and Dynamic (thin) Provisioning saves money by producing higher utilization rates, and thereby reducing current and future capital expenditures. Better Utilization = Better Return on Asset (ROA). Your CFO will love that message.

Late last month, I read an article in the Financial Times entitled Prisoners of Inertia. Among other things, it mentioned an economic principle called the Endowment Effect, which describes how cost and uncertainty deter change. The article goes on to say that until consumers become dissatisfied with savings and start spending again, the global economy [...]

IDC recently reported a drop in storage revenue. This could be due to a) economic conditions and restricted capital, b) users are buying the same or more capacity but at lower price points, c) manual and automated reclamation efforts are presented once-stranded capacities, or d) all/none of the above.

Our government is talking non-stop about transparency and accountability, as it soothes fears around budget spend and government interventions. I would like to plug these same 2 qualities in terms of storage management and cost controls. If it sounds like I am trying to lobby for a coveted government post (I am caught up on [...]

I have been writing about price and cost for years. Cost of acquisition is just a fraction of the TCO. In my work, labor is the single largest TCO element, followed closely by the total cost of acquisition. The next 3 most dominant TCO elements are migration costs and power/space/cooling and finally all the maintenance [...]

I came across this article with some not-so-revealing statistics on IT spending trends year-to-date, and the prognosis for 2009.