Global manufacturing group, four data centres
A global manufacturer ran 3.2 petabytes across eleven arrays from three vendors in four data centres, each bought on a different refresh cycle, with a refresh due somewhere every year. C4C assessed the estate, ran a vendor neutral selection, negotiated the winning platform 27 percent below the incumbents’ refresh quotes and migrated everything onto two arrays in fourteen weeks. Footprint fell 45 percent, power and cooling by more than 30 percent, and cost per usable terabyte by 41 percent.
Eleven arrays from three vendors, 3.2 petabytes, four data centres in three countries, and six support contracts on three management tools. Nobody had designed it that way. Each array had been bought when its predecessor aged out, from whichever vendor was strongest that year, which meant a refresh was due somewhere in the estate every single year and every one of them was negotiated from weakness, because the incumbent knew the data was not going anywhere.
We spent years at Dell, EMC and across the wider storage market, so we knew how each of the three incumbents would price a refresh and where the give was. That is what let us run a genuinely open selection and then negotiate the winner from strength. C4C supplied the platform as well as advising on it, and said so from the first meeting.
Delivered through our IDEAL framework, the disciplined method behind every C4C engagement.
Within months the estate was simpler, cheaper and faster, and the refresh cycle trap was broken. The part that surprised the client most was not the footprint or the power figure. It was that the first refresh on the single platform, two years later, was negotiated with leverage for the first time in a decade.
Our advantage is vendor side experience paired with independence. We spent years at Dell, EMC and across the storage market building the quotes and selling the arrays, so we know how each vendor prices a refresh, which claims stand up and where the margin sits. On this engagement we supplied the platform as well as advising, and we said so, because the client could see the incumbents’ quotes next to ours and judge for itself.
It depends on how fragmented the estate is, but the gains compound. Here eleven arrays from three vendors became two on one platform: footprint fell 45 percent, power and cooling by more than 30 percent, cost per usable terabyte by 41 percent, and six support contracts became one. The saving that lasts longest is the negotiating position, because one refresh cycle can be planned and negotiated where three cannot.
Often, but not blindly. A single platform removes silos, simplifies management and gives you one refresh to negotiate instead of several. The risk is that it hands the winner the same leverage the incumbents had. The answer is to agree the capacity roadmap and the support terms in the original deal, as this client did, so the platform is consolidated but the commercial position is not surrendered.
Because every array bought on a different cycle brings its own management tool, support contract, skills and refresh negotiation, and capacity stranded on one array cannot be used by another. This client was paying for 3.2 petabytes of storage and six support contracts to get one pool of capacity, and negotiating a refresh every year from weakness. The cost is in the duplication and in the leverage you never have.
Yes, and we said so from the start. The selection was run with the incumbents and two challengers quoting the same design, and the client could see every quote side by side. We negotiated the winning platform 27 percent below the incumbents’ refresh proposals and supplied it. Where we supply, we show the pricing, because the value of independent advice depends on the client being able to check it.
Modern all flash arrays deliver far more capacity and performance per watt than ageing spinning disk, so consolidating eleven arrays onto two removed most of the draw outright. Tiering the archive off flash it did not need removed more. In data centres already at their electrical limit, that 30 percent was the difference between a new power feed and none.
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