You can still come up with a good acquisition price with a single storage vendor, but it will take some effort, starting with training the negotiator. A trained negotiator can achieve a better deal with a vendor than an IT manager who's distracted by other concerns and who must maintain a relationship with the vendor, says Gartner's Passmore. The trained negotiator may be part of the organization's professional purchasing group or an IT person who has received training in large acquisition negotiation.
Not all IT managers agree that trained negotiators can do better in a single vendor situation. "I get a better price than purchasing," says Todd Berube, Windows server engineer for the City of Orlando, FL's Windows servers and storage. Berube is responsible for the city's extensive Windows systems infrastructure. Orlando has standardized on Dell Inc. and EMC for Windows servers and storage. Although the city's purchasing department may have professional negotiators, "I have a better day-to-day relationship with the vendor," Berube says. "I'm purchasing devices every few months. I know the industry and the timing."
