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Can Storage Resource Management Save Us From Ourselves? We Quiz 9 SRM Vendors To Find Out.: Page 4 of 4

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Still, Tek Tools' Barth remains optimistic that server consolidation and virtualization technologies are providing an education to IT departments regarding the merits of centralized management. In his view, control is shifting to enterprise IT groups, which in the coming few years will compel storage vendors to make good on interoperability. BridgeHead's Clifton also finds reason for optimism in the increasing popularity of Web services and the move toward SOA.

But storage vendors have stonewalled in the face of other open standards pushes, so why should now be any different? It won't, unless enterprises assert themselves and demand standards. This is likely to happen only after IT is convinced that SRM will yield measurable improvements in the things that matter: operational efficiency, cost savings, and risk reduction.

For SRM to gain this credibility, organizations need statistics showing efficiency gains from enabling fewer storage admins to do more via automation. But none of the vendors we talked to could point to a definitive survey or empirical analysis supporting cost savings or efficiency improvements.

"I'm not aware of any analytical studies of the actual human efficiency gains of implementing and using a large SRM solution versus the cost of using individual hardware element managers and operating system features," says Olocity's Reich, with some frustration.

In the absence of meaningful data points, vendors resort to anecdotal evidence. We've all heard these pitches and have learned to take them with some skepticism. Northern Software's Vernersson cites an SRM study his company performed for one of Scandinavia's largest financial institutions. "It was estimated that 32% of primary storage capacity would be reclaimed during the first six weeks after deployment, and that growth rate reductions of more than 40% would push back initially scheduled capacity investments by more than 18 months. The first-year savings alone were estimated at more than $400,000."

A few vendors offer calculators--CA, HP, and IBM have ROI analysis tools, for example--to help customers predict their potential gains from SRM. Only Tek-Tools' Barth would go on the record to state that his Storage Profiler product delivers the 40% savings in operational costs touted by Gartner nearly a decade ago. He says his customers have individually and collectively realized at least that large of a reduction in total storage costs via a combination of operational savings and infrastructure allocation efficiency improvements following deployment of his product.

Jon Toigo is CEO of storage consultancy Toigo Partners International, founder and chairman of the Data Management Institute, and author of 13 books. Write to him at [email protected].

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