Repeating a theme that is echoed across the Wikibon user community, Caltech’s Eugean Hacopians, a senior systems engineer who supports more than 2.3 PB of data for the academic arm of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), cautions technology buyers to be wary of vendor performance claims and chides the bulk of vendors who seem more intent on launching into sales pitches than on making the effort to understanding his unique requirements. Hacopians had especially harsh words for several large storage vendors for their seeming lack of responsiveness to JPL’s needs and staunch adherence to their own marketing and technology agendas.
While JPL is only one small entity within the Caltech universe, as part of its charter to provide scientists with telescopically collected infrared images of the entire “visible” universe, it stores massive amounts of unstructured data that needs to kept “forever”. This includes trillions of small images or objects at roughly 5 million per TB. Their archiving software is homegrown and, unlike most archival solutions, JPL cannot take advantage of de-duplication or single instancing functions to reduce storage growth, nor can they delete data over time.
With approximately 2,500 spinning disks to manage today and unlimited data growth for the future, along with a potentially high profile reference client in the offing, one might be led to believe storage vendors would be tripping over themselves to have JPL as a client. However, with tight budgets, Hacopians has to make due with less than bleeding-edge technologies as well as keeping an inventory of spare parts and allowing storage products to go off maintenance in a “use it until it dies” strategy.
On the other hand, as additional storage or technology refreshes are needed, JPL has deployed inexpensive SATA drives to lower cost per GB and to cut energy costs, and Hacopians has implemented Nexsan’s autoMAID (massive array of idle disks) technology. Hacopians says that, in his experience, small vendors are more responsive to smaller accounts such as JPL, which spends less than $1 million per year on storage.
Bottom Line
Consistent with Hacopians’ statements regarding vendor behavior, during recently held roundtable discussions facilitated by Wikibon, many users related their frustration with vendors, whom they experience as being more interested in selling what than in understanding the buyer’s unique requirements. Continued commoditization resulting in lower cost per GB, improved reliability of storage components, and the availability of these components to a broader spectrum of vendors - including smaller players willing to innovate and build relationships with customers while providing superior customer service - will increase the pressure on the largest storage solutions providers, who are not meeting the needs of mid-market or small customers and, in some cases, even erode their market share in the biggest accounts.
Action Item: Vendors need to ask good questions, show interest in helping customers solve business problems, and not launch into a product pitch before taking the time to understand a customers requirements. This is especially important in edge environments. Don’t rush to propose a solution before gathering the type of information required to ensure a good fit. Take the time to understand the prospect and their environment and be prepared to walk away from a deal or recommend another solution when appropriate.
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