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

Chapter 9. Retail Grocer

As noted previously, operational efficiencies related to flexibility and ease of management are difficult to quantify outside of the terabytes (TB) per administrator metric, which includes measurable components, such as the number, frequency, and duration of storage-related activities.

A critical function of the storage decision maker is to understand the principle contribution of new technologies and to make informed decisions regarding his own infrastructure, even when the long-term benefits of storage networking are not easily quantified. Although Net Present Value (NPV) and Return On Investment (ROI) analysis is fundamental to the decision-making process, the current lack of readily available tools for measuring utilization and operational efficiencies impairs visibility of the immediate impact of deploying new storage solutions.

Between the deployment and the evaluation phases of storage networking rollouts, when visibility is typically at its poorest, it is crucial to maintain adherence to the storage vision and to trust that operational efficiencies, though difficult to measure, are quickly realized after the learning curve is achieved. These efficiencies are typically significant enough to justify in the short-term storage networking projects that enable the storage vision until successful, quantifiable results can be achieved.

This case study highlights the fact that the early adoption of new technologies can be tied directly to a strategy for long-term growth and customer care. Although concrete numbers regarding allocation efficiency and utilization efficiency are difficult to pinpoint, the financial value of the solution documented here are, over time, measured primarily in terms of operational efficiency and increased availability.

The migration to the Cisco MDS platform illustrates this company's belief in a storage vision built on the following principles:

Multiple storage transport protocols

Virtualized disk subsystems

Centralized storage management