Most Vendors are resistant to this because getting performance isn’t easy for all vendors – this is highly visible in an onsite POC and so the true Total Cost of Ownership becomes the basis for the decision not a list price comparison per TB – which is as said above totally meaningless and a marketeers metric rather than a customer buying guideline.

The customers who include the POC step in their buying cycle will be best positioned to understand for their requirements the best vendor to choose. The value of getting away from the corporate slides and into execution with the vendor before you buy adds to the safety of the vendor decision. Its also an excellent tool for the customers’ procurement team – to ensure they negotiate the total cost of ownership over 5 years aspects – often overlooked or underplayed by vendors during the evaluation.

Hope this helps!

1. Quantity discounts are major. (Or negotiated prices.)
2. Quantity discounts are severe.
3. The mapping between TB of user data and hardware or storage is very imprecise.
4. Vendors aren’t particularly forthcoming, and even if one tried to get the info from users, each situation is different.

I do the best I reasonably can.