We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we now know that it is bad economics. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

When it comes to your storage infrastructure do you feel that your vendors are giving you a square deal? In the long run computer storage technology should find a level pricing structure. However, we live in the here and now, and many enterprise storage consumers feel that they are not getting their money’s worth from their storage technology vendors. How do you value your storage infrastructure? Is a simple ROI model enough? Is it important that it costs just as much money to spin disks with very little data on them as it does to spin disks that are full? Does it make a difference that your company may be keeping documents that are never going to be accessed again on your most expensive storage platforms? How are storage decisions made in your company?

How do you determine Storage Capacity Efficiency, when it is very hard to get clear capacity numbers from your storage vendors? How do you determine Storage Capacity Utilization, when it is very hard to define your operational and manpower costs per TB of storage.

Determining your actual storage costs can be a daunting task. However your storage costs can represent 40% of your IT budget. Therefore, it seems that getting these costs under control is a very important. Zerowait is working on creating a methodology for evaluating the economics of storage, and we will be putting together a small conference on storage economics in the next few weeks. Give us a call if you would like to be included in the conference.