The Business Case for Storage Networks

Understand the business case for storage networks and lower your total cost of ownership with this comprehensive guide

• Introduces the benefits of storage networks, providing a comprehensive business case for the adoption and deployment of storage networking solutions
• Provides a complete overview of the TCO methodology for storage networks
• Summarizes the EVA, NPV, and ROI metrics used to evaluate projects, ensuring their financial success
• Outlines the best practices for executing a storage migration strategy
• Includes a TCO calculator and decision-making checklist that you can use to assess your decision

When adopting a storage networking solution, you need to understand the business case for your decision. Yet this process is fraught with many business and technical considerations. How will the adoption of a storage networking solution affect your current infrastructure? How will your IT team grapple with the addition of a new technology? How can you turn the cost of your storage network into a business benefit, strengthening your bottom line and paving the way for future success?

Storage networking technologies promise a high return on investment (ROI) and have the potential to reduce the cost of corporate IT functions, which can result in significant savings. The increased efficiency associated with networked storage also promises a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for storage, and a lower, fully burdened cost of storage means greater long-term savings for large and small corporate datacenter environments. SAN technologies also offer increased business continuance capabilities for increased uptime and availability.

The Business Case for Storage Networks covers the problem of direct-attached storage (DAS) and the solutions offered by storage area networks. It details the experiences of IT decision makers and implementers who have deployed SAN solutions to address the formidable problems facing their companies, which are now overwhelmed with expensive, inefficient, and difficult-to-manage DAS solutions. The Business Case for Storage Networks addresses the problems of storage growth and increased consumption, the role of the IT department as a cost center, and how SAN technologies can help save money in the long run, helping you make an informed decision about your storage networking investment.

This volume is in the Network Business Series offered by Cisco Press. Books in this series provide IT executives, decision makers, and networking professionals with pertinent information on today's most important technologies and business strategies.

Bill Williams is the manager of the Cisco Enterprise Storage Operations team, where he focuses on storage total cost of ownership (TCO), metrics, and operational efficiencies. Bill joined Cisco in 1998 as an ERP systems administrator. In January 2002, Bill moved to the virtual storage team at Cisco, where he was integral in creating a dedicated Enterprise Storage Systems Team within Cisco IT. During May 2003, the Enterprise Storage Systems Team won the Cisco CIO Award. In October 2002, Bill began studying the TCO for storage at Cisco, and the following year, he began a consolidation project to lower the Cisco storage TCO. As the program manager for the Network Storage Virtual Team from 2003 to 2004, Bill guided the implementation of SAN storage and infrastructure in the Cisco datacenters around the globe. Bill holds an M.B.A. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Bill Williams is the manager of the Cisco Enterprise Storage Operations team, where he focuses on storage total cost of ownership (TCO), metrics, and operational efficiencies. Bill joined Cisco in 1998 as an ERP systems administrator. In January 2002, Bill moved to the virtual storage team at Cisco, where he was integral in creating a dedicated Enterprise Storage Systems Team within Cisco IT. During May 2003, the Enterprise Storage Systems Team won the Cisco CIO Award. In October 2002, Bill began studying the TCO for storage at Cisco, and the following year, he began a consolidation project to lower the Cisco storage TCO. As the program manager for the Network Storage Virtual Team from 2003 to 2004, Bill guided the implementation of SAN storage and infrastructure in the Cisco datacenters around the globe. Bill holds an M.B.A. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.