Caveat Emptor

EMC's announcement that they are going to start including the license for Virtual Provisioning for DMX/3/4 and V-MAX for free is very welcome. Not only because it includes useful and necessary technology for the simplification but it also simplifies the license model by bundling something else into the base.

Feature/functionality licensing is the bane of many a storage manager's life; it can almost be a full time role to sit and work out what you are paying for and what you should be for. The license models are arcane at times and make the job of comparing like for like when doing competitive analysis an absolute minefield. Not just a pure technical comparison but also a commercial comparison becomes a tedious exercise of endless spreadsheets!

The vendors themselves know this and play on it; you get vendors going in at the highest level claiming that your incumbent is massively over-charging you and you could be paying a lot less. The note comes down from on high and you as the poor storage manager sit there trying to work out how the price was derived; you then discover that the cost that this new vendor is quoting actually is missing essentials like replication, cloning and indeed any management software.

Suddenly the cost quoted rises substantially and you state the actual cost and the whole thing descends in recrimination and blame. And all due to arcane and incoherent pricing models. On occasion I've had to explain the pricing model to the sales-guy in front of me to save him from making a serious error and understating a cost. So what would make things easier?

Firstly, a simple per terabyte cost for useage of features. I'd love to see straight line pricing without tiering but that appears to be a model adopted widely by the software industry. You guys could be the first to step away from the tiered model but I can see reasons why you don't; at least not on your published price lists.

Secondly, a clear definition of the functionality of each package. It's not always clear from the name what it provides and what it does. Teach your product managers to name products in clear, concise terms and not to come up with weird and wonderful acronyms.

Thirdly, the base cost per terabyte should include everything needed to provision and manage a LUN simply and effectively. So management software (both CLI and GUI), wide-striping (if you support it), thin provisioning and arguably all the automated optimisation software.  I'm sure there are other things; there are some real weird and wonderful things out there which vendors don't include as their base.

Imagine my surprise to find that CIFS on a NetApp filer was included but NFS was a chargeable option? It can be justifiable but it was a real WTF moment. SMC to manage your Symms is included if you buy Control Center but it's not included with the base software at the moment.

Barry, perhaps as part of my campaign to simplify storage management and provision, you can encourage EMC to include SMC as part of the base?

UPDATE: Barry mailed and pointed out that SMC is part of Sym Package which does include CC and other bits but it just goes to show how unclear the licensing is! Also, it gave me a reason to check a recent quote; the cost of the software when compared to the cost of the tin is frightening! Frighteningly high that is. Actually EMC do a very poor job of encouraging the use of SMC.

And fourthly, be a lot more open and honest about what you are including when you are talking to people who might know less than the readers of this blog. At times, I think that if you were selling double glazing; you'd forget to mention that the second pane of glass was an additional cost!

'Caveat Emptor' should not be your motto!