To read about Storage Economics – Hardware Maintenance – Part 1

Topics we covered in the previous post included

The concept of Hardware Maintenance

The Strategy related to Hardware Maintenance

The Facts about Hardware Maintenance

The beliefs about Hardware Maintenance

Here are a few other components related to storage hardware maintenance services as it fits into a concept of Storage Economics.

There was an interesting post by David Merrill at HDS regarding how a customer in the APAC market has been able to leverage Independent Service Providers for various different assets that they own and how they decide what stays with the manufacturer and what is being maintained by Independent Service Providers.

The Plan for Hardware Maintenance

Hardware Support: Support on storage assets could be available through Independent Service Providers (ISP’s), which could help reduce CapEx, OpEx and improve ROA by levering the existing technology on the floor for a longer time span.

Remote Support and Diagnostics: Independent Service Providers can enable storage frames for remote call home features, remote support and perform diagnostics for troubleshooting.
Code Upgrades (firmware) and Engineering: This support is typically only available through the manufacturer. But here is a fact; at the end of a 3 year life cycle of the equipment (when you start paying for off warranty support) how many times have you seen code upgrades being offered to customers, since vendors are more focused on technology that is current today).

Global technical Support: Global 24 x 7 technical support is often provided by Independent Service Providers as a part of service offerings.

Onsite Certified & Trained engineers: Independent Service Providers typically hire the same engineers that have been working for the vendor and redeploy them onsite for services

Spares: Spare parts are standard offering through Independent Service Providers to have them shipped at the site within the 4-hour SLA or possibly store it as onsite spares.

SLA: Normally Independent Service Providers SLA’s are matched to vendor specifications.  Also a custom tailored support plan can be created for the test and development systems – non critical systems, which might not need the utmost priority.

Software Support: In most cases Software support can be continued with the vendor, which enables you to receive software updates for your host environment or any other layered software. If your storage platform is more than 5 years old, may be you can investigate into dropping the software support.

The Pricing for Hardware Maintenance

So typically off-warranty hardware maintenance services may be available to you at 50% to 70% discount of vendors list price since these organizations do not have a sustaining engineering cost.

This will help increase the life of the asset you already own on the floor, which is fully functional and operational.

This will further help you reduce your CAPEX (by not purchasing new assets), reduce your OPEX (by reducing your maintenance cost) and improve your ROA (an asset you have already paid for).

This savings will need a 12-month cycle to fully qualify since hardware maintenance services are charged on a monthly basis.

With 50% to 70% savings per device (Storage Frame), if you have an environment with 1PB storage, your organization could see a savings of millions of dollars over 3 years and a 5PB environment might see a double-digit million dollar savings over 3 years.

Is this something that sounds interesting and can help you overall preserve your CapEx and reduce your OpEx?

Your Alternatives for Hardware Maintenance

Are people within your organization ready and open for this concept?

Do your homework in selecting the right service provider.

It is okay to consider giving the Independent Service Providers a partial environment that might consists of Test and Development Systems, to get a better feel for their services and response times.

Compare service offerings from multiple independent service providers.

Ask the right questions and see how long transition plans would take for a cut over.

Ask questions related to outages in these environments and the Independent Service Providers experience around it.

It is completely okay to drill the Independent Service Providers technical folks with tons of questions related to your environment.

Here are some additional things to ask the Independent Service Provider:

Ask about recertification cost

Ask about reconfiguration cost

Ask for any hidden cost

Ask about spares that are used

Ask about spares procurement process

Ask about spares testing process

Ask to see their operations (visit the ISP)

Ask about support plan

Ask to access the online service calls portal

Ask about online web portal for advisories and errors

Ask about response times

Look into escalation plans

Look into call flow processes

Ask about gaps in service compared to the vendor

Ask for a dedicated trained engineer (based on the amount of business)

Ask about training for engineers

Ask for a dedicated account manager

Ask for a dedicated technical contact

Ask for sales contact for your account

Ask for escalation contacts

Ask for project plan related to the transition from vendor to ISP

Investigate how big the Independent Service Provider is

Check references, ask reference customers about outages, parts replacement process, about hardware – software issues and call ownership issues

Compare SLA’s

Check the viability of the support solution (tools, processes, escalation, risks, etc)

Do not make decision on pricing only

Determine contingency plans.

So where do you find these alternatives?

Well, your initial search can begin on the web. Following that, you should further inquire into the company and try to dig into their area of expertise. Ask them about their competition and inquire with the competition on support plans.

If you have a Storage partner, go to them and ask them to find an Independent Service Provider for your organization.

If you have Global Outsourcing partners, inquire with them, to see if they have any strategic partners they recommend.

Honestly, working with so many different customers over the world, I have seen Independent Service Providers do good, they help the customer reduce CapEx and OpEx, extend the life of the equipment and most importantly run the entire operations without any disruptions, but that said, I have seen many Independent Service Providers fail miserably to deliver on promised services.

Do the research and jump on this if it is a viable option for your organization.

Its all about Storage Economics!!!!

© Devang for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Storage Economics – Hardware Maintenance – Part 2
Read more posts categorized as Storage

For example purposes, lets assume we are only talking about one single Storage device (frame) in the environment. Also for this blog post, lets assume the manufacturer (OEM) of the Storage frame is the vendor.

The concept of Hardware Maintenance

You purchased a storage asset 3 years ago. Spend a million dollars in acquisition cost on that storage device, also paid for software licenses, implementation cost, migration cost and training cost.  You are almost at a 2 million dollar mark to implement this Enterprise Class Storage, which includes your Tier1 and / or Tier 2 data.

How is this Storage frame doing today?

It’s working great, applications associated with it are robust, Thank God over the past 3 years we haven’t seen any outages in this environment.

Oh…………by the way, the vendor just visited today and is proposing we do a tech refresh in this environment.

The Strategy related to Hardware Maintenance

So the first question, are you ready for this tech refresh?

Is your business ready for this tech refresh?

Is your team ready and trained for this new technology?

Do you need external resources for this tech refresh?

Are there budgets and proposed growth in the business to pay for this tech refresh?

Do we really need a tech refresh?

Are your applications ready for this tech refresh?

Would your host environments be ready for this tech refresh?

What is that you are trying to gain by this tech refresh – Processing Power, Speed, Savings, Green Data Center, Power, Electricity, management cost, etc?

Are your users complaining about your application performance?

Is the number of users growing on these apps?

So how many Nah’s and Yah’s do we have on the questions above?

The Facts about Hardware Maintenance

The vendor is proposing a substantial savings and helping us reduce the TCO on these assets over the next three years.

Cost of hardware maintenance from the vendor for year 4, year 5 and year 6 (on the existing storage asset) is almost equivalent to the cost of purchasing new assets

We are being offered the best deal, free training, the vendor reduced the hardware acquisition cost by 20% and they have another 5% discount for the quarter closing tomorrow.

The beliefs about Hardware Maintenance

Hardware Support: No one other than the vendor can provide hardware support on the Storage assets because it is just too complex to manage.

Remote Support and Diagnostics: No one other than the vendor can provide remote support and diagnostics.

Code Upgrades (Firmware) and Engineering Support: No one other than the vendor can provide Code upgrades and Engineering Support.

Global Technical Support: No one other than the vendor has a 24 x 7 global technical support.

Onsite Certified & Trained Engineers: Only the vendor has trained and certified onsite engineers.

Spares: 24 x 7, 4 hour response spare parts logistics, only the vendor has it.

SLA: Only the vendor can provide a mission critical or a premium SLA that would include either 24 x 7 x 2 support or 24 x 7 x 4 support.

Software Support: No one other than the vendor can provide Software support

So, how do you get around these industry notions?

Please stay tuned for the next blog post on Storage Economics – Hardware Maintenance – Part 2 tomorrow.

© Devang for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Storage Economics – Hardware Maintenance – Part 1
Read more posts categorized as All, Storage