Global IT leaders concur: no hardware agenda is the right agenda

At the conference, Tayan announced key findings of a research study that revealed global IT leaders overwhelmingly favor a multi-vendor approach to operating and managing their data centers. Across a sample base of 810 IT experts, nearly all highlighted partnerships and product interoperability among vendors as important when making purchase decisions. The research findings strongly buttress VERITAS' strategy to enable utility computing by focusing on partnering and more than a decade of innovation in supporting heterogeneous IT environments.

IT leaders from 12 countries were interviewed on a broad range of topics that ranged from determining the average number of vendors upon which they currently rely, to the perceived risks associated with relying on a single vendor, to their desire to standardize on common software platforms to manage their multi-vendor data centers.

"IT departments are tasked with increasing the utilization of what they have today to meet agreed-upon service levels, and their success depends upon selecting vendors that have the capability to help them manage the complexity they have today and what they may have tomorrow," said Tayan. "VERITAS software is heterogeneous, supporting all major storage, server and application environments, giving customers freedom from vendor lock-in."

Multi-Vendor Benefits
The study revealed that 98 percent of the survey respondents claim there are cost benefits associated with operating an open, heterogeneous multi-vendor data center environment.

The top five benefits cited are:

1. Freedom to shop around (73 percent)
2. Enhanced bargaining power (50 percent)
3. Ability to take advantage of special deals (46 percent)
4. Better long-term protection of the overall IT investment (27 percent)
5. Reducing costs of obligatory consultation and training (24 percent)

Disadvantages of Single Vendor Lock-In
The study also highlighted that 90 percent of the respondents believe there are disadvantages to operating a homogeneous data center environment, where the majority of hardware and software comes from a single vendor.

The top five disadvantages cited are:

1. Losing ability to shop around for the best deals (64 percent)
2. Lack of power to negotiate lower costs (49 percent)
3. Losing awareness of new technologies on the market (28 percent)
4. Being too risky for a company to have all its eggs in one basket (27 percent)
5. Can be forced to upgrade products according to the vendor's schedule instead of the company's own needs (22 percent)

In addition, more than two-thirds believe that utilizing a single main vendor can limit or dictate the company's technical direction, shifting the balance of power toward the vendor.

Aligning IT to Business Needs: The Power of Software
The study revealed that 96 percent believe there are benefits of utilizing common software to manage multiple platforms in the data center.

The top five benefits include:

1. Simplified processes (67 percent)
2. Easier to run and manage (55 percent)
3. Increased productivity and efficiency (38 percent)
4. Increased availability and uptime (26 percent)
5. Reduced employee training costs (24 percent)

VERITAS' building block approach to utility computing provides availability, performance and automation software, which is designed so that customers' data is always available, provisioned at expected performance levels, and automated to reduce administrative costs with products that include:

• Availability: VERITAS Foundation SuiteTM, VERITAS NetBackupTM, VERITAS Backup ExecTM, VERITAS Volume Replicator, VERITAS Cluster Server

• Performance: VERITAS i3TM, VERITAS Storage FoundationTM for Databases

• Automation: VERITAS OpForceTM, VERITAS CommandCentralTM

Tayan concluded, "IT leaders who embrace multi-vendor IT environments and tie systems together with VERITAS availability, performance and automation software building blocks are well on their way toward a utility computing model where IT can be delivered as a measurable and billable service, aligned to meet business needs."

For more information and to access the research study results, please visit: http://www.veritas.com/no-hardware-agenda

VERITAS VISION 2004: Software Building Blocks Enable Utility Computing. Now.
At VERITAS VISION 2004, Tayan reflected on key accomplishments of the past year, launching new products and services, and detailing plans to further enhance the company's software building blocks that enable utility computing.

"IT departments are spending too much time and money simply enabling their businesses when they could differentiate their business to better serve their customers," said Tayan. "VERITAS software enables IT departments to drive down operational costs while delivering improved performance and availability on a low-cost shared infrastructure."

Held at Emirates Towers Hotel, the premier regional conference for storage management was supported by sponsors including Brocade, IBM and Net Apps (platinum sponsors), STME, Tech Access, StorageTek and Elite (gold sponsors), and Dell and Peribit (silver sponsors).