DCIG Midrange Array Buyers Guide - Coming Your Way Soon
Ever since I stopped writing technology reports for Storage magazine a few years ago, people periodically ask me when I am going to start writing them again. Until a few months ago, the answer was "No plans to write them." But then I started to receive some really good ideas from individuals like Kelly Polanski over at WaveBreak Marketing as well as Jim Nash, DCIG's new Business Development Manager. Their ideas, coupled with my own internal desire to once again resume writing these reports, pushed me over the edge and down this road again.
While there are any number of subjects for which I could first develop a technology report under the "DCIG" moniker, part of the reason I selected the midrange array category was organizations are constantly buying new new midrange storage arrays. Data storage growth, storage consolidations, aging storage hardware, new storage array features are just some of the reasons that organizations are constantly buying storage with midrange arrays often the preferred hardware on which to store this data.
However deciding to buy a midrange storage array is easy. Coming up with a list of viable candidates, narrowing your choice down to just a few models and then eventually selecting one - that is a much more difficult decision and a process that is very arduous to say the least.
As I have been going through the process of coming up with a list of midrange array providers and their available models, I can quickly see why most organizations rarely look beyond the list of the names of the providers that they may readily recognize - say HP, EMC, IBM, HDS, NetApp and maybe Dell and Sun.
If an organization just limits itself to those seven providers, it already has over 60 different models from which to choose. If it attempts to factor in every other provider that offers a midrange array product, the list of providers quickly grows to over 20 and the number of midrange array models to over 130.
But in many respects, building the list of storage providers and their available models this is the easy part. More difficult is creating a list of which features matter on each storage system, which ones may matter in the future and then weighting each of these features appropriately. Needless to say, I could find no guidelines from anyone on how to weight these different features or how to prioritize which ones mattered and when.
That is part of what I intend to accomplish with this report: objectively build a report that covers as many midrange arrays as possible, rate them and then recognize the winners in different categories.
The key here is developing a list that is "objective" and still try to pay its bills. (Yes, DCIG does have people to pay and does not provide "free" coverage.) So I called and spoke to a number of contacts that I have in the industry as to how to best accomplish this and here is some of the feedback I received.
First, one individual told me that another analyst who attempted something like this in the past had to rate almost all of the products that he/she evaluated with a high ranking. The analyst was forced to do this because he/she planned to sell the report to the providers. However the providers would only buy it if the analyst rated their product well (a 9 or better on a 10 point scale).
So to get the sale and sidestep the issue, apparently the analyst gave many of the products a "9.X" rating. In this way, the providers would buy the reports but the real product rating on each feature was subtly embedded in the "X" after the 9. Needless to say, this made everyone a winner except the end-user who, unless they perceived the subtleties of the rating system, was just as much in the dark as before.
Another interesting tidbit I turned up was that many storage providers are very frustrated by the lack of transparency behind analyst reports. While I certainly respect the right of any analyst firm to keep its evaluation method private, in this day and age I have found that the more transparency that is provided, the more credibility the reports tend to have.
A prime example of a report that some are starting to question is the value of the Gartner Magic Quadrant. I was just looking at the November 2009 Midrange Array report and it shows about 20 midrange array providers in the quadrant but provides little information on any of the individual midrange array models. Further, how Gartner ranks the providers is some what of a mystery to everyone.
Water cooler chatter isn't helping Gartner in this matter any either. I recently talked to one individual who allegedly was sitting behind a Gartner analyst during a vendor presentation and who saw the analyst dragging and dropping dots on the quadrant during the presentation. Whether or not that quadrant was ever published or if that story is even accurate, I do not know. But what is disconcerting is the fact that the story sounds plausible because of how its reports are constructed.
Having now done my preliminary research and talked to a number of people as to how to best evaluate these different midrange arrays, I believe I have arrived at a method where all midrange array providers are treated fairly and scored appropriately. I will plan to provide more information on how my research is progressing as I continue to compile my report, alert everyone when this midrange array buyers guide is available for purchase, share in the report once it is published how conclusions were arrived at and announce the winners as the date approaches.
Have a good weekend everyone and I look forward to talking to you again next week.
While there are any number of subjects for which I could first develop a technology report under the "DCIG" moniker, part of the reason I selected the midrange array category was organizations are constantly buying new new midrange storage arrays. Data storage growth, storage consolidations, aging storage hardware, new storage array features are just some of the reasons that organizations are constantly buying storage with midrange arrays often the preferred hardware on which to store this data.
However deciding to buy a midrange storage array is easy. Coming up with a list of viable candidates, narrowing your choice down to just a few models and then eventually selecting one - that is a much more difficult decision and a process that is very arduous to say the least.
As I have been going through the process of coming up with a list of midrange array providers and their available models, I can quickly see why most organizations rarely look beyond the list of the names of the providers that they may readily recognize - say HP, EMC, IBM, HDS, NetApp and maybe Dell and Sun.
If an organization just limits itself to those seven providers, it already has over 60 different models from which to choose. If it attempts to factor in every other provider that offers a midrange array product, the list of providers quickly grows to over 20 and the number of midrange array models to over 130.
But in many respects, building the list of storage providers and their available models this is the easy part. More difficult is creating a list of which features matter on each storage system, which ones may matter in the future and then weighting each of these features appropriately. Needless to say, I could find no guidelines from anyone on how to weight these different features or how to prioritize which ones mattered and when.
That is part of what I intend to accomplish with this report: objectively build a report that covers as many midrange arrays as possible, rate them and then recognize the winners in different categories.
The key here is developing a list that is "objective" and still try to pay its bills. (Yes, DCIG does have people to pay and does not provide "free" coverage.) So I called and spoke to a number of contacts that I have in the industry as to how to best accomplish this and here is some of the feedback I received.
First, one individual told me that another analyst who attempted something like this in the past had to rate almost all of the products that he/she evaluated with a high ranking. The analyst was forced to do this because he/she planned to sell the report to the providers. However the providers would only buy it if the analyst rated their product well (a 9 or better on a 10 point scale).
So to get the sale and sidestep the issue, apparently the analyst gave many of the products a "9.X" rating. In this way, the providers would buy the reports but the real product rating on each feature was subtly embedded in the "X" after the 9. Needless to say, this made everyone a winner except the end-user who, unless they perceived the subtleties of the rating system, was just as much in the dark as before.
Another interesting tidbit I turned up was that many storage providers are very frustrated by the lack of transparency behind analyst reports. While I certainly respect the right of any analyst firm to keep its evaluation method private, in this day and age I have found that the more transparency that is provided, the more credibility the reports tend to have.
A prime example of a report that some are starting to question is the value of the Gartner Magic Quadrant. I was just looking at the November 2009 Midrange Array report and it shows about 20 midrange array providers in the quadrant but provides little information on any of the individual midrange array models. Further, how Gartner ranks the providers is some what of a mystery to everyone.
Water cooler chatter isn't helping Gartner in this matter any either. I recently talked to one individual who allegedly was sitting behind a Gartner analyst during a vendor presentation and who saw the analyst dragging and dropping dots on the quadrant during the presentation. Whether or not that quadrant was ever published or if that story is even accurate, I do not know. But what is disconcerting is the fact that the story sounds plausible because of how its reports are constructed.
Having now done my preliminary research and talked to a number of people as to how to best evaluate these different midrange arrays, I believe I have arrived at a method where all midrange array providers are treated fairly and scored appropriately. I will plan to provide more information on how my research is progressing as I continue to compile my report, alert everyone when this midrange array buyers guide is available for purchase, share in the report once it is published how conclusions were arrived at and announce the winners as the date approaches.
Have a good weekend everyone and I look forward to talking to you again next week.
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