Beware of “Free” Assessments

Sometimes organizations get caught up in the concept of a “free” assessment offer. Nothing is ever truly free. In fact, these approaches actually end up costing you more in a very short period of time.

CiRBA-Powered assessments not only enable you to choose the right paths and safely establish more efficient infrastructure, but these assessments save you hard dollars in the cost of people’s time and hardware purchases.

CiRBA leverages template-driven analysis of empirical data, so there is very little delay between targeting a group of servers and having a detailed, actionable plan. Unlike manually-intensive analysis approaches, CiRBA provides answers on placements, resource allocations, remediation steps, and configurations immediately so that action can be taken and savings realized. 'Free' assessments typically rely on tools that leave time-consuming, subjective design judgments to the IT professional, based on little more than an individual's personal experience. The result is a slower assessment of lesser quality.

The second and most dramatic cost saving is attained by purchasing less server hardware. CiRBA enables you to safely select optimal hardware platforms, models, configurations, and most importantly –the right amount. You can also evaluate existing hardware for suitability. Manual approaches and spreadsheets do not provide a detailed approach to virtualization planning. Most IT professionals using these methods build in excess capacity for safety. This means that existing gear is not contemplated for reuse and too much new gear is purchased.

Be sure to ask yourself the following questions to understand what you are getting into!

What are they using to analyze your environment?

Ask your ‘free’ assessment provider what tool and method they are using to analyze your environment. Many virtualization and hardware vendors provide free assessment software to services organizations. These tools were built as sales tools designed to sell software licenses and hardware, and provide sizing estimates for that purpose. Do not base vital purchase decisions on analysis provided by sales tools.

CiRBA is purpose-built software designed to help you determine how to transform your environment in the fastest and safest way possible. CiRBA’s Data Center Intelligence software applies rule-based analytics and sophisticated algorithms to empirically gathered utilization, configuration, and business data, in order to accurately model existing environments and derive the optimal scenarios for any given transformation. The result is a detailed placement and remediation plan for establishing efficient, safe infrastructure.

What is their agenda?

Before you sign on to any free assessment, consider how the vendor will recover the cost of those services - through the cost of the hardware and/or software yoou purchase from them. The assessments involve light analysis completed as inexpensively as possible. These decisions are too important to base on rough estimates. Decisions made early in a data center transformation influence purchases that you will be made for at least the next five years.

CiRBA enables you to model your environment using different scenarios, platforms, risk profiles, and financial benefits, exploring all possible options to ensure that you are making the right decisions for today and tomorrow. CiRBA enables you to safely select optimal hardware. Most free assessments build in excess capacity for safety resulting in over provisioning. Additionally, existing gear is not contemplated for resulting in excess new gear purchases.

What are you really getting from that free assessment?

Are you getting a complete analysis with detailed scenarios to choose from, according to different strategies, risk profiles, and assumptions, complete with associated workload placements and remediation plans? Or is the assessment simply a sizing estimate, with the majority of infrastructure design work still incomplete? Ensure you investigate thoroughly when contemplating a 'free' assessment.

CiRBA - driven assessments enable you to choose scenarios that consider infrastructure design. When a CiRBA analysis is complete, you are ready to start implementation.

How does the assessment impact infrastructure over the next few years?

Decisions made early on will influence purchase decisions that have a large impact on your data center for the next five years. Modeling your environment using different scenarios, platforms, and risk profiles, ensures that you are making the right decisions for today and tomorrow.

Where do the opportunities for consolidation lie in my environment?

Look beyond a single platform or technology to enable the greatest amount of efficiency possible. Consider analyzing beyond X86, VMware, and certain hardware platforms to discover new opportunities.