Quantum's Regional Specialist "Tiger" Teams Help Customers Set Realistic Deduplication Expectations and More
A key challenge that small and midsize businesses (SMBs) face is quantifying what benefits that they will derive from implementing deduplication in their environment. SMBs may have some idea about much data they backup on a daily, weekly or monthly basis to tape. However converting the numbers into meaningful ROI data that SMBs can use when sizing and purchasing a deduplicating disk appliance like Quantum's DXi3500 or DXi5500 is another matter altogether.
Multiple factors come into play when deciding between a DXi3500 or DXi5500 and forecasting what type of deduplication benefits they might expect. Some examples include:
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Frequency of full backups. Advertised deduplication ratios are typically based on running full backups. SMBs that only run full backups on weekends but incrementals or differentials on weekdays may achieve different deduplication ratios than those clients who run full backups every day.
- Type of data. Some data types are very favorable to deduplication while others do not deduplicate very well. For instance, companies that are generating large amounts of videos or graphics on a daily basis may find that deduplication does not help them at all while companies that have large numbers of redundant files may achieve abnormally high deduplication ratios of 30:1, 50:1 or greater.
- Retention Length. The longer the data is retained on a DXi3500 or DXi5500, the greater the chance is that new data will match data that is already stored on it. However, longer retention rates may mean the business needs greater amounts of capacity.
It is for these types of reasons that Quantum's field marketing and sales organization has developed what it refers to as its regional solutions specialists or "Tiger" teams to help businesses determine what size DXi deduplicating appliance is the best fit for its customer environments. When dealing with Quantum customers, their mission is to ensure and verify every customer has a positive experience with Quantum's deduplicating appliances. To do this, a core tenant of their responsibilities is doing the front end analysis that includes customer interviews and site surveys.
During this process, they also educate both the customer account and local sales teams about how to best implement deduplication and set realistic expectations. Quantum's CTO, Jeff Tofano, says that some of the feedback he has gotten back so far from these "Tiger" teams indicates that a lot of customers are struggling with what to expect from deduplication. Putting these teams in the field has helped to dispel certain misperceptions about the deduplication ratio that customers think they might otherwise achieve. "20:1 and 30:1 is a ubiquitous number that is often cited as an expected deduplication ratio but feedback from the field tells us that this number can vary a lot," says Tofano.
Quantum recognizes that it is playing catch-up in the deduplication space but it is taking the appropriate steps to compete and differentiate itself. Quantum's "Tiger" teams are one of those differentiators. By putting qualified sales personnel and engineers in front of customers at the very beginning of the sales process, setting realistic expectations and providing their customers with the right DXi from the outset, Quantum has a greater degree of confidence that its consultative customer approach and its ability to solutions sell disk, tape and management can deliver on client expectations and its clients have had their expectations set according to facts gathered from their environment.
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