Originating Author: Fred Moore
The IT industry has repositioned itself with several new areas of emphasis. These include a new value system for IT where, for the first time, the real value proposition is becoming more important than the acquisition costs. For years, users perceived the hardware purchase price as their primary acquisition criterion. This has become increasingly misleading and reflects the now old and out-of-date viewpoint that the value of the IT infrastructure exists in hardware. This is like measuring the value of the television industry by the number of sets sold (the old rules) rather than the value of the content being transmitted by television (the new rules). The impact on the storage industry of this shift in focus from Capex (capital expense) to Opex (operating expense) will have lasting effects on the way the value of any storage solution is viewed.