How to Convey the Opportunity Benefits of Enterprise Storage

Most enterprises don’t automatically increase their IT budgets year on year – the C-Suite often just expects teams to ‘do more with less’. To find ways to improve performance and productivity, but without going on a spending spree. And yet, as we all know, achieving performance and efficiency improvements always comes with an investment of sorts. It’s impossible to stand still in today’s data driven, AI-powered economy.

Enterprise storage is an excellent example. It is a strategic asset and part of the critical enterprise infrastructure. So how does your CFO react when they learn of plans to refresh and upgrade the organisation’s current storage infrastructure? Do you know to present a clear business case? One based on long term cost savings and return on investment (ROI), rather than just proposing an upgrade for technological sake.

Identifying and amplifying the rationale for investing in enterprise storage – the business value of technology, rather than emphasising just the technical value - is hugely important. It involves determining the business ROI, the short-term and long-term cost savings, and very importantly, communicating the opportunity benefits. This is the ability to make future savings from traditional storage budget allocations as a result of an investment, by freeing up money that can then be diverted to other, higher profile IT projects, such as, AI or cybersecurity readiness.

Without understanding how to communicate the value of opportunity benefits, enterprises can end up missing out on all the transformation opportunities offered by advanced enterprise storage solutions. They can get stuck in an IT rut. Their enterprise storage becomes stagnant, delivering only incremental improvements, and they lose the opportunity to make those important, budget-freeing cost savings.

Communicating the business value of enterprise storage solutions is the key for organisations to jump over the hurdles that accelerate the speed-to-value that C-level executives require to justify major IT investments, especially for data-driven enterprises.

A smart IT leader will find common ground with the CFO of their enterprise on the business value-based merits of an enterprise storage upgrade, refresh, or replacement.

Infinidat has found ways to help IT professionals to bridge the gap between speed-to-value and technical one-upmanship, and to convince CFOs of the opportunity benefits.

When constructing a strategy to present to the CFO to obtain agreement and sign-off on a new, major purchase of enterprise storage technology, be sure to include the following:

Payback of the storage system

Potential to prevent costly damage from cyberattacks

Lower CAPEX and OPEX potential

Ability to re-invest cost savings into AI, cybersecurity, or other important projects.

Here is an example of how to communicate these benefits to your CFO and make the case for purchasing a new storage system:

“We’re going to make a strategic shift in our enterprise storage strategy in order to lower our CAPEX and OPEX – as much as 60% lower than what we have in our current storage infrastructure. We’re planning to buy a new storage solution that pays for itself within 11 months. It also comes with the industry’s highest-rated white glove service at no extra cost. And it comes with cyber resilience built into it, so it will enable our company to recover from a cyberattack, such as ransomware and malware, within minutes, minimising the damage to our reputation and saving us potentially millions of pounds. To top it off, the significant money that we are saving from this storage refresh can be re-invested in other strategic IT projects, such as our AI modernisation.”

Tangible business value must be part of the evaluation equation for an IT function to be successful. Decisions involve multiple stakeholders and a CFO will not approve a major purchase simply on the basis of technological improvements.

The Business Value of Enterprise Storage

The topic of demonstrating business value is evergreen - it never gets old. That’s because business leaders are continually measured by how technology is having an impact on business outcomes. Positive ROI is a business outcome. Cost savings are a business outcome. Preventing a business disaster is a business outcome.

Infinidat commissioned an IDC study that revealed how enterprise customers can realise significant additional value, with an average annual benefit of $1.29 million (approx. £980,000) and a 162% ROI over five years. On average, enterprises cut their storage operations costs by nearly half, by transitioning to Infinidat’s enterprise storage solution. This research by IDC, a leading provider of global IT research, included in-depth interviews with several existing enterprise customers and applied a methodology to determine business value of IT infrastructure spending. It was able to quantify the business value.

What was even more eye-popping was the research found that the payback for an enterprise’s purchase could be realised within 11 months, showing a stunningly positive ROI for high-end enterprise storage.

Recovering from Cyberattacks Before the Damage Hits

An enterprise’s data infrastructure has become a popular attack vector for cyber criminals, as a result of radical expansion of the cyber threat landscape. It is a compelling truth to tell the CFO that, if your company adopts cyber storage resilience, the company will avoid the massively negative impacts of cyberattacks.

Guided by a cyber-centric, recovery-first strategy, cyber storage resilience and recovery bolsters your IT capabilities to be able to rapidly recover data, in the event of a ransomware or malware attack. This is central to next-generation data protection, which is a new advancement that goes far beyond traditional backup.

Next-generation data protection is game-changing – from immutable snapshots to automated cyber protection, from a fenced forensic environment to cyber detection to rapid recovery. Today, with new technological prowess, you can recover your critical enterprise data in a matter of minutes and nullify the impact of a cyberattack. This is a strong selling point for any business investment.

The business implications of cyber storage resilience are enormous.

No need to pay the “ransom” to free your data from being held “hostage”

No damage to your enterprise’s reputation

No loss of business from a crippled data infrastructure

No negative impact on customers or partners

No extra burden on IT resources to deal with the fallout of a successful cyberattack

No business disruption

Re-Invest the Cost Savings into the Business.

When you optimise your enterprise storage infrastructure with advanced solutions and technology, you free-up money to do those leading-edge projects that you want and need to do, such as AI modernisation. This opportunity benefit will appeal to the CFO, who needs to figure out how to fund future innovation. The trick is being able to communicate this gain effectively and I hope this article has demonstrated ways to go about this task.