WHITE PAPER. Enterprise Vault Cost Analysis. An Osterman Research White Paper Published January 2018

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1 WHITE PAPER Enterprise Vault Cost Analysis An Osterman Research White Paper Published January 2018 Osterman Research, Inc. P.O. Box 1058 Black Diamond Washington USA

2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Enterprise Vault is among the premier legacy archiving systems in use today. Its heritage goes back to the 1990s as a Digital Equipment Corporation offering, but it came into its own after rights to the product were acquired by KVS in late KVS was acquired by Veritas Software in 2004, Veritas was acquired by Symantec in 2005, and in 2016 Symantec sold Veritas, making Enterprise Vault once again a Veritas offering 1. Although Enterprise Vault is widely deployed and has deployments of more than 200,000 users, it is an expensive platform relative to many of its competitors, particularly those that offer cloud services. The goal of this white paper is to set out the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for Enterprise Vault based on an independent cost analysis that Osterman Research has produced. KEY TAKEAWAYS Over the range of 1,000 to 5,000 users, the four-year cost of Enterprise Vault runs from $10.32 to $14.85 per user per month. Software and related support costs account for the largest single component of Enterprise Vault TCO, ranging from 40 percent (1,000 users) to 48 percent (5,000 users). Labor is the second largest component, accounting for 24 percent of TCO (1,000 users) to 35 percent (5,000). Hardware and related support costs are the third largest component of Enterprise Vault TCO, ranging from 29 percent (1,000 users) to 14 percent (5,000 users). However, storage costs can represent a significant variable in the TCO of Enterprise Vault based on both the amount of content stored, as well as the choice of storage platform. Power costs, while a relatively minor part of the overall TCO for Enterprise Vault, are not trivial and should be considered as part of any analysis for the platform, particularly when comparing its cost to that of its competitors. While we have opted to evaluate the TCO of Enterprise Vault over a period of four years, Osterman Research believes that it is more prudent to consider costs over a longer term, which would include replacement of the underlying, onpremises infrastructure. Just replacing servers and storage at the end of a fouryear period, for example, can significantly increase the monthly TCO for Enterprise Vault. Moreover, this provides a more balanced comparison to cloudbased alternatives, since these providers regularly upgrade their infrastructure. ABOUT THIS WHITE PAPER This white paper was sponsored by Micro Focus; information about the company is provided at the end of this paper. Although Enterprise Vault is widely deployed and has deployments of more than 200,000 users, it is an expensive platform relative to many of its competitors. HOW MUCH DOES ENTERPRISE VAULT COST? Enterprise Vault is a leading archiving solution, has been for many years, and is recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving as a Leader. Enterprise Vault was strengthened through the acquisition of LiveOffice, which eventually became the cloud version of the platform. The Enterprise Vault product offering includes archiving for content from a wide variety of platforms, including Exchange, SharePoint, Lync/Skype/Teams, Salesforce Chatter, Box, other file shares, and any content sent using the SMTP protocol. Enterprise Vault is recognized as a capable, if not an extremely high performance, archiving platform Osterman Research, Inc. 1

3 However, Enterprise Vault is an expensive offering compared to many alternatives, particularly if an organization seeks to upgrade its legacy Enterprise Vault environment or migrate to the platform from another archiving environment. KEY ELEMENTS IN DEVELOPING THE COST OF OWNERSHIP FOR ENTERPRISE VAULT Determining the cost of any on-premises archiving platform is based on a number of assumptions: the amount of content to be archived, how long this content will be retained, the cost of labor to manage the archiving infrastructure, the hardware to be used, the lifespan of the infrastructure, etc. Here are the basic assumptions that we used in developing the TCO for Enterprise Vault: User assumptions o 20 megabytes of archived content per user per workday o Content is stored for seven years Infrastructure assumptions o 1,250 users per Enterprise Vault server o 10,000 users per Compliance Accelerator/Discovery Accelerator server o 2,500 users per SQL server o 2,500 users per Backup Exec server Labor assumptions o 1,500 users supported per Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) IT staff member o $65,000 fully burdened annual salary for an FTE IT staff member Hardware and software assumptions o All software is deployed on Dell PowerEdge R930 Rack servers o Content is stored on Dell PowerVault MD3060e platforms o Hardware is supported with two- to four-hour onsite service response o Annual maintenance cost for software is 20 percent o All systems include a redundant, failover capability o Prices used for all hardware and software elements are based on public sources Power assumptions o Each server and storage platform consumes 850 watts per hour o Power is priced at $0.12 per kilowatt-hour Determining the cost of any onpremises archiving platform is based on a number of assumptions. TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP Our cost model reveals that over the range of 1,000 to 5,000 users, the total cost of Enterprise Vault over a four-year period is $713,000 to $2.48 million; the monthly, per-user cost for Enterprise Vault is from $10.32 to $14.85, as shown in Figure 1; these costs for an organization of 2,500 users are broken out in Figure Osterman Research, Inc. 2

4 Figure 1 Monthly, Per-User Cost of Enterprise Vault for 1,000 to 5,000 Users Source: Osterman Research, Inc. Figure 2 Cost of Ownership for Enterprise Vault for 2,500 Users TOTAL, FOUR YEARS TOTAL FOUR YEARS, PER USER ANNUAL, PER USER MONTHLY, PER USER COST ELEMENT Hardware and support $248,750 $99.50 $24.87 $2.07 Software and support $611,730 $ $61.17 $5.10 Labor $433,333 $ $43.33 $3.61 Power $50,037 $20.01 $5.00 $0.42 TOTAL $1,343,850 $ $ $11.20 Source: Osterman Research, Inc. LABOR REQUIRED TO MANAGE ENTERPRISE VAULT It is important to note that labor is not the largest single cost in managing Enterprise Vault, but it is an important one in determining the overall cost of the platform. For example, the annual salary for an IT Support Specialist in Manhattan, Kansas is between $29,000 and $49,000 per year, whereas a similar position in New York City would be $48,000 to $81, Taking the midpoints of each of these salary ranges for an Enterprise Vault deployment of 2,500 users will result in a total cost of ownership difference of 15 percent per month not a huge difference, but significant when comparing the difference between the cost of Enterprise Vault and other platforms, particularly those in the cloud. Even at the relatively modest, fully burdened salary of $65,000 per FTE IT staff member per year, that works out to an annual cost for labor alone of $43.33 per user. POWER COSTS Power is another significant cost that should be considered when evaluating the cost of Enterprise Vault or any other on-premises platform. For example, based on the 2 Source: Glassdoor 2018 Osterman Research, Inc. 3

5 power assumptions noted above, an environment of 2,500 Enterprise Vault users would be supported with an infrastructure that consumes megawatt-hours annually (the same amount of electricity as 9.7 average US residential homes 3 ) at a cost of $12,509, or 3.7 percent of the total cost of the environment. WHERE ARE THE MOST SIGNIFICANT COSTS? Our research found that software and support represents the greatest single component of the overall cost of ownership, accounting for anywhere from 40 percent to 48 percent of the overall costs over the range of 1,000 to 5,000 users, as shown in Figure 3 below. Conversely, the cost of hardware and support declines significantly as the number of users increases. Figure 3 Distribution of Costs for Enterprise Vault for 1,000 to 5,000 Users Source: Osterman Research, Inc. Software and support represents the greatest single component of the overall cost of ownership. STORAGE AND STORAGE PLATFORMS ARE KEY As noted above, we used a Dell PowerVault MD3060e storage platform (populated with 7,200-rpm, NLSAS, six-terabyte drives). The base fee for this platform with a single, six-terabyte drive is $18,601. However, if we opted for Centera storage (list price of $120,341 4 ), the per-user cost for 2,500 users would increase from $11.20 per month to $12.89, an increase of 15 percent. Moreover, the amount of archival storage also plays an important role in the total cost of ownership. For example, our model used a mean of 20 megabytes of storage per user per workday and a mean retention period of seven years, resulting in a 2,500-user environment requiring 83.4 terabytes of storage over that period. However, if we cut each of these in half to 10 megabytes of storage per user per workday retained for 3.5 years total storage requirements would fall by 75 percent to 20.9 terabytes. Although the relatively inexpensive storage platform used in our assumptions would not have a major impact on the total cost of ownership for (EMC Part Number C8BFSAW) 2018 Osterman Research, Inc. 4

6 Enterprise Vault, use of storage as expensive as that of Centera platforms would have a significant impact on overall costs. REPLACEMENT COSTS NEED TO BE CONSIDERED Our assumption for the lifespan of an Enterprise Vault deployment is four years. If we assume that organizations replace just the hardware in their Enterprise Vault environment at the end of four years, then the five-year cost of ownership would be dramatically higher: going back to our example of a 2,500-user organization, this would increase the monthly cost from $11.20 per user over four years to $12.74 per user over five years, an increase of 14 percent. This does not take into account the IT labor necessary to evaluate, procure, deploy and configure all of the new hardware that would be required to replace the hardware elements. Considering replacement costs is actually a more realistic way to evaluate the costs of an on-premises solution like Enterprise Vault for a couple of reasons. First, infrastructure periodically needs to be replaced and will represent a major expenditure at some point, and so it should be factored into the overall, long-term cost analysis. Second, considering replacement costs provides more of an apples-toapples comparison with cloud providers that upgrade their servers, storage platforms and other infrastructure on a regular basis. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Enterprise Vault is a capable platform for archiving various types of content, including , SharePoint data, file shares, etc. However, Enterprise Vault is relatively expensive compared to many alternatives, particularly those in the cloud. This is especially true when considering the replacement cost of an on-premises Enterprise Vault infrastructure. SPONSOR OF THIS REPORT Micro Focus is a global software company with 40 years of experience in delivering and supporting enterprise software solutions that help customers innovate faster with lower risk. Micro Focus is headquartered in Newbury, United Kingdom. Micro Focus and HPE Software have joined to become one of the largest pure-play software companies in the world. Bringing together two leaders in the software industry, Micro Focus is uniquely positioned to help customers maximize existing software investments and embrace innovation in a world of Hybrid IT - from mainframe to mobile to cloud. We are a pure-play software company focused from the ground up on building, selling and supporting software. This focus allows us to deliver on our mission to put customers at the center of innovation and deliver high quality, enterprise-grade scalable software that our teams can be proud of. We help customers bridge the old and the new by maximizing the ROI on existing software investments and enabling innovation in the new hybrid model for enterprise IT Osterman Research, Inc. 5

7 2018 Osterman Research, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced in any form by any means, nor may it be distributed without the permission of Osterman Research, Inc., nor may it be resold or distributed by any entity other than Osterman Research, Inc., without prior written authorization of Osterman Research, Inc. Osterman Research, Inc. does not provide legal advice. Nothing in this document constitutes legal advice, nor shall this document or any software product or other offering referenced herein serve as a substitute for the reader s compliance with any laws (including but not limited to any act, statute, regulation, rule, directive, administrative order, executive order, etc. (collectively, Laws )) referenced in this document. If necessary, the reader should consult with competent legal counsel regarding any Laws referenced herein. Osterman Research, Inc. makes no representation or warranty regarding the completeness or accuracy of the information contained in this document. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED REPRESENTATIONS, CONDITIONS AND WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ARE DISCLAIMED, EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT THAT SUCH DISCLAIMERS ARE DETERMINED TO BE ILLEGAL Osterman Research, Inc