Storage Management Strategies for the CIO
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Overall rankings
The five vendors that garnered
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enough evaluations to be finalists racked up solid scores with
every product line earning a 6.00-plus score in each rating category. Breaking the scoring down
even further, there were only two sub-6.00 scores for single statements within all five categories.
Net-App’s attempt at a clean sweep of all five categories was thwarted by IBM, which copped top
honors for product reliability. Both vendors netted remarkably consistent scores, but the narrow
margin NetApp was able to maintain over Big Blue in the other four categories was enough for an
overall win. This was a repeat performance for NetApp; the vendor prevailed in the same four
categories in the previous Quality Awards for Enterprise Arrays.
Sales-force competence
NetApp (6.55) scored highest on four of the six statements in winning this category, which measures the effectiveness of a vendor’s sales team in paving the way for a successful implementation. Hitachi (6.38) drew top marks for the other two statements, but it was just barely nudged out by IBM (6.41), which finished second. NetApp’s top scores were for having flexible sales reps (6.71) and knowledgeable sales support teams, but it outdistanced the field fairly handily for being easy to negotiate with, with a score of 6.56 that easily topped second-place IBM (6.19).
Breaking down the numbers:
- Hitachi had high statement scores for sales reps that are knowledgeable about customers’ industries (6.56) and for reps who keep customers’ interests foremost (6.50).
- IBM’s best rating was for having knowledgeable support teams (6.66), which was also the highest rated statement across all vendors with a 6.51 average.
- Only one statement score fell below 6.00.
Key statistic:
Considering all five finalist vendors, their average 6.33 category score for sales-force competence is second only to the 6.37 from the last Quality Awards.
This was first published in March 2012
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