The Business Case for Storage Networks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Choosing the Right Vendor

With these basic concepts of SAN architecture and design, a cursory understanding of your own application's requirements and your environment's TCO (or TCO target), it is time to begin the "request-for-x" process and the search for the right product-vendor match. The most commonly completed steps in this process are as follows:

It is best to begin the "request-for-x" process with a proper understanding of your own environment. As vendors become engaged with your project, they are likely to ask many of the same questions touched upon here.

Request for Information (RFI)

The request for information (RFI) should be fully scoped to target a specific application or group of applications, and provide an appropriate matrix for weighting the importance of each application's requirements. For example, an application requiring maximum uptime with no concern for performance would weight availability higher than performance.

An RFI should also provide some historical background regarding the application environments such as long-term trending analysis, any changes in the application client base, and the stated reason for the architectural change. If the goal of the project is to maximize ROI and minimize TCO, you should provide additional information and consult with the vendor's professional services teams about the benefits of consolidation and other storage strategies designed to lower TCO. Do not be afraid to go into detail about the nature of the requirements; thorough communication through every phase of the request process benefits the requestor in the long run.

The pre-sales technical team supporting the vendors you engage will want to know as many specifics as possible before making a recommendation, and therefore should have contact with senior-level technical resources throughout the information gathering phase of the project. After the initial meeting, you should source the information flow through a primary or central contact rather than have the vendor's sales and technical team constantly peppering the members of your technical staff with questions. A project manager or senior technical architect is a good candidate to collect and manage the information flow during the RFI phase. It might also be beneficial to have technical representation from the clients, so that when a final platform is selected, all stakeholders have ample time to add appropriate input.

Note

A vendor management office, if your company has one, might be another good candidate for ownership of the collection of information during the RFI phase.

It is also critical during this stage to evaluate a vendor's certification policy for third-party products. Doing so can likely prevent serious delays during the actual implementation phase.

Finally, the RFI should have a clearly stated start date and end date. Vendors who miss the deadline for submitting the RFI are prevented from participating in the next stage, the Request for Proposal/Request for Quote (RFP/RFQ) process.

RFP/RFQ

If a single vendor meets the criteria based on the RFI process, you can go directly to the RFQ stage. Assuming multiple vendors have been selected based on the criteria outlined in the RFI, an RFP (and eventually an RFQ) should be sent to the vendors making the initial cut.

The RFP/RFQ should also be accurately scoped and should provide realistic timelines and budgetary constraints. You should set forth as soon as possible, whether you are seeking professional services in addition to hardware or if your team does the implementation. It is also critical to spell out the basis of selection in detail to level the playing ground. If the criteria are price and performance, then the vendor whose product has the highest performance and the lowest price should win the purchase order. A granular weighting scale eases the decision-making process.

In addition to application requirements, it is critical to select a vendor on the basis of the product's adherence to industry standards. Adherence to industry standards increases the product's end-to-end manageability and increases operational efficiency.

To increase operational efficiency, or at least not negatively impact current efficiency rates, a storage networking solution should seamlessly fit into your environment's management framework, in addition to providing its own management interface.

It is also customary during this time to create a test bed with sample data from the environment and allow the vendors to present a solution onsite for measurement and quantification of actual performance of the system. Even a scaled down version of an actual environment with data sets comparable to those used in production can give an adequate overview of a system's performance potential. It is critical that the vendors know what tools are used to measure performance and that the same tools be used on each test bed for each vendor. You need to document and clearly communicate the tools and processes used for measurement.