IBM XIV STORAGE SYSTEM Overview - Introduction

TCO Reinvented

Copyright IBM Corporation 2009 

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Introduction 

A high-

end storage system’s total cost of ownership (TCO) is like an iceberg: the vast 

majority of costs are hidden from view. Comparing systems by looking at obvious factors, 

like capacity and box price, may be easier. But taking a fuller look at the factors impacting 

IT budgets over a system’s lifetime will yield a more accurate TCO assessment and, 

ultimately, a more informed decision as to which system is truly more favorable to the 

company's bottom line.  

The chart below shows a fuller set of storage array cost factors and their generally 

recognized relative impact on a system’s overall cost.*

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Figure 1: Typical TCO costs of enterprise storage arrays 

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In “

Governance Dashboard for Enterprise Storage

” (Information Management Magazine, May 2006), Dick 

Benton of GlassHouse Technologies Inc. notes that Gartner and Forrester attribute as much as 60-70% of 

overall storage TCO to the Administration factor. This large figure likely comes from grouping Administration 

together with Backup/Restore and other cost factor categories. Here, we break them out separately.