Most times initial cost objections stem from criteria set by an immediate “pain point purchase”. These sales opportunities are driven by one or two servers and connected application, needing refresh or implementation. The system specifications for server refresh are difficult to sell ‘right sized servers’ with today’s vastly powered CPU and RAM systems. This drives IT designs to virtualization but then you have to sell the platform upon which the will build their virtualization strategy. Standalone servers are easy to comprehend and position because all they are is a flat sale. Blades drag along with it many other components not core to the initial request, but all required for the server to function. Helping the customer realize that they have to pay for those connection pieces anyway and that the total cost is nearly equal on initial purchase AND they have “X” number of available opportunities to expand their server investment at “Y” dollar “per server” cost savings. The expansion factor of the blade chassis, coupled with the ability to sell the right sized IBM blade chassis for the opportunity quickly changes the conversation to accommodate the more strategic infrastructure investment.
Another very salient point for helping the customer appreciate the cost savings of the blade investment relate to the knowledge that the IBM server / software/ tape / SAN all comes with full support. Gone are the days where you had a single server for each application. Most servers now are being asked to run dozens of applications on a single system. The impact of a single system going down effects not only the scope of that application but other tangent business processes would work without it. IBM helps the customer avoid the support concerns with end to end support offerings coupled with high quality server proven hardware.
Many customers have experienced firsthand the cost of data availability. The RIO of blades in lifecycle management is what will help them save money. Hardware initial cost is an extremely small percentage to the cost of the solution. Most costs are related to maintenance, labor to maintain, and downtime costs for recovery of data. Do they really want their business running on hardware, won and supported by the lowest bidder.
There are a myriad other small soft costs which blades help with IT management. All which drive down the TCO related to their IT dollar spend and all play out over the lifecycle of the technology.
Soft Cost: Ways to help articulate savings towards initial vs lifecycle cost (Itemize Before and After)
Electrical Power Savings
Review cost per watt of IT datacenter.
Datacenter Coolant
Review cost per btu of IT datacenter and support costs of maintenance
Rack Space
Add up their total racks in U / by their datacenter runtime costs and express the cost per rack U relate to blade density
Decrease Cable Complexity
Ask how long it takes to rack and cable a server, label, and document coupled with cost if they have had outages related to poor or improperly managed cable issue impacting availability.
Help Desk Resources
Savings of time and IT resources to debug a situation when through role management IT Helpdesk or Junior Admins can view the system without having physical or administrative privilege access
Disaster Recovery Infrastructure
Even small IT shops need or have a desire for Disaster Recovery of some if not all their data. A blades are building blocks and the chassis offerings can scale from small (DR site) to more robust (Production site). Components are also modular and can be replaced and moved to accommodate immediate DR needs.
Single Vendor Support
IBM had a great OEM relationship for options in the blade chassis, but offers it all under the umbrella of a “datacenter in a box” we call a blade chassis
Multi Vendor Capabilities
IBM’s Open Chassis support has an array of vendor’s providing options and software which can leverage the infrastructure core which the blade investment provides
Deployment Automation
With IBM Supported tools, through the blade chassis, you are able to automate the retooling of resources related to any number of customizable event criteria
Dark Datacenter Management
Once the blade chassis had been cabled the entire deployment and maintenance of the chassis can be done remotely
Cost savings on subsequent blades
Once the initial chassis with all it’s switching components are deployed and setup, subsequent cost of adding additional servers to the chassis will be far below even the most competitive pizza box vendor while still leveraging the enterprise class HA features of the chassis. Itemize out this cost at initial purchase time.
Dev Test Environment
Even with Virtualization of systems, IT resources need a cost effective way to build a development environment to test the Hypervisors and / or systems. Blades offer an expedient way to replicate and decouple production from test within the chassis
IBM Blade Futures
IBM is the ONLY blade vendor who still has a solid roadmap for their ORIGINAL blade chassis in support for in-place upgrade and investment protection of the Chassis. Articulate how IBM is vested in the customer’s desire to leverage their blades over generations of technology road bumps.
Remote audit of the chassis
Ability to remotely and with quickly export the configuration of all components in the chassis for compliancy, security, patch, warranty, or tech support needs.
Not every customer will connect to and appreciate the dollar savings related to the soft cost, but when articulated, they quickly add up to an appreciation that blades are the future and a worthwhile investment. Arrow has made a significant investment in partnership with IBM in knowing these different IT cost savings points and will help you articulate these to the customer. With Arrows technical solutions resources, and IBM’s blade technology, we can sell this solution and have a customer happy in having made the investment.
Our Solutions Lab is available on the MPower portal.
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