Vendor Landscape: Hyperconverged Infrastructure
Simplify and optimize IT operations for high-value and business-critical workloads.
View Vendor Shortlist
What is a shortlist?
A shortlist is a personalized list of vendors based on the criteria you define. Your shortlist offers more information about vendor's strengths, weaknesses, price-points, etc, and ranks them according to your needs.
Access this Vendor Shortlist by logging in with your Info-Tech Research Group membership or unlocking this content.
What is a Value Score?
The Value Score indexes each vendor’s product offering and business strength relative to their price point. It does not indicate vendor ranking.
Vendors that score high offer more bang for the buck (e.g. features, usability, stability, etc.) than the average vendor, while the inverse is true for those that score lower.
Price-conscious enterprises may wish to give the Value Score more consideration than those who are more focused on specific vendor/product attributes.
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Your Challenge
- Traditional siloed infrastructure makes it difficult for IT to deliver the cloud-like agility and functionality the organization demands.
- Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) can simplify workload deployment for organizations that do not have the resources or expertise to deploy a full infrastructure stack, especially smaller IT-led organizations.
- Organizations adopting HCI need to be aware of the possibilities of vendor and product lock-in from hyperconvergence, avoid it when possible, and ensure the solution fits organizational needs.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- The top HCI vendors started in storage. Enterprise-grade storage is at the heart of the leading hyperconverged vendors. Most of these vendors evolved into the integrated systems space, but developed their technology on enterprise-ready storage.
- Flash is more than storage caching. Flash cost continues to go down, while the capacity of flash continues to increase. Coupled with higher performance features like deduplication, all-flash HCI solutions are beginning to become the norm.
- Evaluate potential vendor lock-in. Hyperconvergence delivers integrated solutions that optimize software to all silos of infrastructure resources, potentially creating lock-in to a single vendor or solution. Identify interoperability issues and concerns before going all-in with an HCI vendor.
Impact and Result
- Explore the evolution of the hyperconverged infrastructure market and learn about the changes HCI can bring to your infrastructure.
- Evaluate the hyperconverged infrastructure products and vendors that will be able to meet your enterprise needs.
- Determine which products are most appropriate for your particular use case and scenario.
1. Evaluate the leading solutions for hyperconverged infrastructure
Understand the evolving market and available options.
2. Identify the hyperconverged infrastructure solution that best meets your needs
Develop a shortlist to speed the selection process.
3. Issue an RFP to the shortlist of vendors
Solicit responses from shortlisted vendors to find optimal enterprise fit.
4. Review RFP winners
Ensure that selected proponents can deliver when it counts.
Guided Implementations
This guided implementation is a three call advisory process.
Guided Implementation #1 - Shortlist Assistance and Requirements
Call #1 - Get off to a productive start: Discuss the market space and how vendors are evaluated. Decide which platform suits you best and narrow down the options based on customized requirements.
Guided Implementation #2 - RFP and Budget Review
Call #1 - Interpret and act on RFP results: Review vendors’ RFPs and ensure the solution will meet your needs. Discuss average pricing of solutions and what can fit into your budget.
Guided Implementation #3 - Negotiation and Contract Review
Call #1 - Purchase optimization: Review contracts and discuss best practices in negotiation tactics to get the best price for your solution.
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this Blueprint, and what our clients have to say.
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
City of Walla Walla
Guided Implementation
9/10
$101K
50
BEN
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
Caribbean Producers Jamaica Limited
Guided Implementation
8/10
N/A
N/A
Harry Winston Inc.
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
N/A
Towson University
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
2
Manning & Napier Advisors, LLC
Guided Implementation
6/10
N/A
N/A
Pawling Properties Associates
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
N/A
Expera Specialty Solutions, LLC
Guided Implementation
8/10
N/A
N/A
Sunnyside Community Services
Guided Implementation
10/10
$127K
20
City of Woodbury
Guided Implementation
6/10
$2,546
2
