Buy storage capacity your way

IBM introduces a procurement method that aligns your capacity costs to your business initiatives 

Data creation continues at an explosive rate, and does not appear to be slowing down. Customers look to their IT partners to help solve these problems and often ask… how can I better align my capacity costs with my business needs?  How can I meet my yearly IT budget cuts?  How do I get this capacity growth under control?

Although progress has been made with flash and cloud technologies, business leaders continue to struggle with storage procurement. The IBM Storage Utility Offering answers the questions above, defining a new way to align business initiatives with capacity procurement, while also removing the guesswork from capacity planning.

Storage procurement remains stuck in the 90’s, and remains a painful experience:

1. Calculate current capacity needs and extrapolate out 12 months.
2. Develop an RFQ, RFP or other torturous procurement method.
3. Invite the vendors you know (And some you don’t) to pitch their solution.
4. Inevitably find out that your needs are much more expensive than you thought.
5. Six months later, you are reviewing responses and thinking POC.
6. You then realize your needs have changed and plans are no longer valid.
7. Nine months later you have your new capacity and hope you won’t repeat it all over again next year.

IBM’s Storage Utility Offering shines a new light on the storage refresh cycle for all industries. The entire 3-year projected capacity is delivered on day one, ready for deployment, so your business and IT staff can react instantly as business needs grow or shift. The benefit is that you only pay for what you use inclusive of the storage, infrastructure and array software.  It is all architected to keep your enterprise delivering to your business goals.

So why IBM’s Storage Utility Offering? Unlike the competition, we differentiate our solution from the rest through execution. The IBM Storage Utility Offering deploys the entire 3-year solution on day one. Most vendors prefer to pass risk on to the customer, delivering just enough capacity to meet initial needs, plus a small buffer. This buffer keeps your capacity just slightly ahead of your needs. As the buffer fills, technicians are sent to disrupt your data center to true-up or add-on, trying to stay ahead of your needs. This unfortunately leads to a re-balancing and rebuilding of the infrastructure.

The idea of a buffer is good for vendor risk and profits; however, this also leads to potential disruption to your business.  In addition, we use IBM Spectrum Control Storage Insights to help you predict and control your upcoming capacity needs so that together we can accurately predict your capacity needs and costs without disruption to your business.

Highlights:

• You only pay for what you use.
• Additional capacities are instantly available by easily provisioning what you need.
• No need for a vendor to disrupt your data center to add buffer capacity.
• Eliminate the cumbersome procurement cycle when adding new capacity within the contract period.
• Move high upfront costs to predictable quarterly charges aligned directly with business needs.

We are currently delivering IBM FlashSystem A9000/A9000R, 900, IBM Storwize V5030, V7000 and IBM VersaStack solutions using this program. In addition, IBM Cloud Object Storage is available in limited availability.

To get started, contact your local IBM representative or preferred IBM Business Partner, who will work with you to define your needs while building a plan for your future.

In summary, the IBM Storage Utility Offering ensures your capacity needs are ready to go as business dictates. This solution helps you to plan for growth and new revenue streams, giving you the agility to get applications to market quickly. You can deliver a closer alignment of operational costs to business drivers.

Buy it your way, a procurement process aligned to your business needs. Click here to learn more.

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