Originating Author: Nicholas Allen
Periodically we get inquiries from users looking to simplify their storage infrastructure and asset management by “partnering” with one storage vendor. We also have conversations with users who either have done so but did not continue such a relationship after the agreement expired, or are looking to get out of such an agreement early.
At EMC World 2008 EMC basically declared it intends to be able to store, manage and secure all the world’s data in all forms including, desktops, PDA’s, datacenters, remote offices, cell phones, SOHO (Small Office/Home Office), Web 2.0 Cloud, etc. And with its impressive line-up of products, solutions and services combined with an aggressive acquisition posture, EMC is certainly a clear candidate for a strategic partner. Indeed given EMC’s stature with:
- Sustained R&D investment of over 10% of revenues,
- Outspending its competitors,
- ˜5,000 technical storage R&D employees,
- Industry’s broadest product portfolio,
- Play in more storage markets than anyone else,
- Ship more storage systems than anyone else,
- All designed top to bottom by EMC,
- Sustained technology and market leadership.
This puts EMC in the enviable position of being able to create a wide variety of total solutions vs. point products. EMC is a safe bet with great services and gives customers one throat to choke.
So, why not choose EMC has a sole strategic partner? First of all, while EMC develops backup software and does resell Quantum tape storage to fill gaps in its portfolio, the company does not emphasize this bottom storage tier and is not considered best of breed in tape infrastructure. So if tape is still alive in your shop, EMC is not a play, although EMC’s RSA division will manage encryption keys for encrypting tape drives. And in partnership with Cisco and Brocade, EMC can encrypt data in the SAN as it flows to a storage device. Secondly, EMC’s green storage strategy is not yet well developed, and most products have not been “green-ified” to the greatest extent possible. EMC’s data deduplication technologies are a notable exception, especially when compared to disk-based backup alternatives without de-dupe.
But the most important factor in considering a strategic partnership with EMC is that customers always get the best pricing and contract terms when there is more than one vendor in the shop. It is extremely difficult to negotiate a single-source contract that will yield competitive terms for the duration of the contract. This is the single most common reason users abandon this kind of partnership. Less frequently, users cite technological inflexibility – they are running on older products and cannot deploy new technologies – both from the partner and its competitors. Thin provisioning and data de-duplication are recent money-saving examples – other vendors had these long before EMC did. But, EMC is not alone here.
The bottom line is by including more vendors in the RPF mix users will broaden their perspectives, sharpen thinking, expose themselves to leading technologies and ultimately develop better solutions for their organizations.
Action Item: Look for the best solutions for storage, content management, security, server virtualization, etc. Prioritize what you need from EMC and leverage EMC’s testing and solutions capabilities. Negotiate, Negotiate, Negotiate! Don’t forget to negotiate training, services and conference tickets. This applies to EMC’s partners as well.
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