After enterprise applications, CIOs are most satisfied with their storage vendors. The overall satisfaction (84.6) of the storage users of enterprises has been boosted by higher satisfaction with vendors on the product features offered by them, followed by their aggressive pre-sales and marketing stance.

With two top rankers and the following two vendors not very far behind, ensuring satisfaction in the enterprise storage market is becoming a challenging play for vendors. No vendor has a clear edge over the other, and in such a scenario, propositioning a USP becomes critical to determining higher satisfaction. Today, some of the challenges being faced by enterprise storage vendors when it comes to customer satisfaction are unforeseen storage requirements, 100% uptime availability, scaling up to the business demands and requirements, integration of legacy systems, and avoiding disruption and maintenance of business continuity.

Sun has been increasing its focus on the storage market in the last one-and-a-half-years, increasing its manpower and improving the footage on ground. The rub off effect of StorageTek has also helped Sun make it to the top along with EMC. StorageTek is a high-end backup, and while there will be enterprises with IBM and HP at the entry level, there are chances that they might still be having a StorageTek at the back end.

Both Sun and EMC have scored the highest satisfaction on two parameters each. While EMC has edged past Sun on the most important parameter of product, on the following most important parameters cited by CIOs (pre-sales and marketing and post sales service), the latter takes away the cake.

While CIOs are most satisfied with product reliability and features offered by EMC, their verdict for EMC is the need for the vendor to become more responsive to their specific requirements and improve upon their domain knowledge and understanding. The company has scored the lowest among all the vendors on the pre-sales and marketing parameter. However, the good news for EMC is that it maintains a good lead over its competitors when it comes to timely delivery and training and handholding.

While HP closely follows EMC and Sun on many of the satisfaction parameters, it takes the lead in terms of price competitiveness. CIOs are quite happy with its clarity of pricing contract, even tough its Sun followed by EMC that they perceive offers value for money.

Some of the major areas of concern that enterprises have from their storage vendors are interaction with the service team, vendors understanding, credit facility received, availability of spare parts, proper demonstration and training to client, and total cost of ownership.

We are focused on proactive services

Anil Zachariah, director, Customer Service, EMC India & SAARC

What has been some of EMCs customer related initiatives in 2007?
We have added two logistics centers in India and also 35-40 engineers for supporting our customers. The expansion of our logistics centers has helped us reach our customers better in terms of spares. There are close to $12 mn worth of spares lying across the six logistics centers. We also got into account reviewing for our large enterprise customers. There is senior management engagement once in a quarter to review customer engagement. We provide them with consulting on how to improve their infrastructure and other key issues. Also, the feedback from the customer helps us in removing any gap areas from our side. With our commercial customers we do the review every six months. Overall, we have been focused on proactive services.

What holds the key to CIO satisfaction in the storage market?
Business continuity is a big concern for the CIO. He cant afford any down time. Therefore, the availability of spare parts is key. However, we have gone a step ahead and built in redundancy within the box itself. Today, all the boxes are configured for redundant spares, which means that if a drive fails there is a stand by within the box itself.