A better mousetrap

"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." That was the nature of things according to Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1912.

The sobering reality is that almost 100 years after this pioneering belief that better will triumph over average, the statement is the exception and not the norm, especially in the context of IT and storage.

Emerson probably did not conceive that a beast called product marketing would exist in the world of the future, whose sole purpose for existence is to blur the boundaries between better and the usual, by creating equality where there is none and perceived leadership when there isn't. It is about trying to reduce all better mousetraps to the level of the commoner, or alternatively bringing the commoner up to an “equivalent feature set” of the better one, even if those features are only available in version two.

As everyone is well aware, feature rich is not always delivery or capability rich, but that is for another discussion.

Why do average CIOs generally pander to the whims of the common mousetrap when there is a better one available in the market? Is it perhaps the fact that the CIO does not actually need to be competitive, and therefore does not need to make any potentially career limiting moves by doing something revolutionary and taking risk? Rather make the popular choice, play averages, and receive the same benefits as all the others. After all, the saying goes: “You will not be fired for buying big blue.”

The smart CIO understands that value is the driver and cost is the negotiation point.

Richard Trickeyis co-founder, CTO and director of SYSDBA.

The rush to implement the common mousetrap is a societal pressure often reinforced by business, since it really only expects mediocrity from IT - and therefore at best, receives what it asks for. So that is how the closed loop common mousetrap system is sustained feeding on its own insecurities, lack of external pressures to change and a general dose of no expectation.

There are, however, those businesses that expect IT to deliver capabilities that differentiate it from the madding crowd and take it to places not yet seen. These businesses expect value from IT, and this is where the smart CIO can be found. These CIOs are smart because one of their key attributes is to challenge the status quo and be unreasonable in doing so. They live by the principle that there must always be a better way of doing something, and therefore they know that there are people out there building better things and doing new things in better ways. This is where they hide - in the land of the better mousetrap.

So how does this relate to storage? Well more often than not, the smart CIO is the one who identifies value in the next-generation arrays of today and takes the steps to revolutionise the business by building an agile, cost-effective, high performance storage platform. It is, after all, the core foundation for all IT platforms, and is therefore one of the key differentiators in IT infrastructure.

A common storage platform may provide common service for a common business, but very seldom will it be able to meet the demands of a great business with great opportunities.

Unfortunately, most CIOs don't fully realise the cost of not investing in great next-generation storage, since they are too focused in buying the platform for the cheapest cost. The opportunity cost of this decision is not recognised until they are in genuine trouble with the current limitations of the cheapest price platform.

The smart CIO understands that value is the driver and cost is the negotiation point, as opposed to the inverse, where cost is the driver and the value is negotiable, understanding the value proposition is key, and sometimes this is lost in translation. This results in the discussion with the storage vendor falling to the lowest common denominator both parties understand - price.

If full value of the next-generation storage array was conveyed through the sales engagement and understood by the CIO, then it is indeed a classic example of a better mousetrap. But what Emerson should have added to his startling revelation was that it would only be the smart CIO beating a path to your door.