Hitachi Vantara VSP One delivers swift ROI & major savings

Organisations using Hitachi Vantara's Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One) have recorded a substantial 285% return on investment and achieved payback within seven months, according to a Forrester Consulting study.

Financial findings

The study, which was commissioned by Hitachi Vantara, analysed the Total Economic Impact (TEI) of VSP One across companies in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Findings showed that over a three-year period, organisations saw an estimated USD $1.5 million in total benefits from improved storage efficiency, operational streamlining, and workload optimisation.

The cost benefits are largely attributed to enhanced data reduction capabilities, with VSP One delivering up to a 6:1 ratio through compression and deduplication features. This efficiency gain has enabled customers to delay further expansion and reduce capital expenses, making long-term infrastructure planning more predictable and cost-effective.

According to the report, operational complexity was reduced by 35%. NVMe performance and simplified provisioning allowed IT teams to dedicate more time to strategic projects rather than routine administration. Participants across information services, legal, and education sectors contributed insights to the study.

Industry challenges addressed

The Forrester study stated: "Organisations across industries are facing increasing demands for performance, scalability and simplicity in their data infrastructure, especially as modern workloads grow more complex and data volumes surge. Many are seeking solutions that not only meet current operational needs but also provide headroom for future growth, improved efficiency and seamless integration with evolving IT environments."

According to Forrester, VSP One addresses these enterprise requirements directly by enabling users to store up to six times more data in the same physical space while keeping costs in check as data storage demands increase.

User experiences

Six decision-makers from North America, Europe and Asia Pacific were interviewed for the study. Improved storage efficiency, eased administrative overhead, and faster workload deployment were among the benefits cited.

"We measured roughly about 30% to 35% reduction in operational complexity. That translates into a headcount at $200,000 to $250,000 a pop," said a chief technology officer in information services. 

Another contributor pointed to the scalability benefits that have a direct financial impact:

"The new array technology allows you to literally add one drive at a time. That's a huge quantitative improvement, at least in terms of pricing and economics in this platform," said a senior infrastructure architect in legal services, during customer discussions conducted for the study. 

Simplification in everyday IT processes was also reported:

"My team used to spend one to two hours troubleshooting storage issues weekly. Now, they just log in, check the health, and move on," said the head of IT infrastructure at an education organization. 

Operational and cost benefits detailed

Forrester created a composite organisation, representing a midsize global enterprise, to quantify the potential advantages of adopting VSP One. Key findings included approximately USD $915,000 in operational efficiencies over three years from storage modernisation, driven by the reduction in complexity and troubleshooting time. Storage efficiency delivered further savings of USD $373,000, while optimised workloads and faster provisioning contributed another USD $241,000 in time savings over the same period.

Octavian Tanase, Chief Product Officer at Hitachi Vantara, commented on the broader impact of VSP One:

"Delivering more than just cost savings, VSP One is helping customers eliminate silos, simplify operations and support hybrid environments without the constraints of proprietary systems. We believe these results support our approach of delivering a unified data platform that performs wherever our customers' data resides – on premises or in the cloud – and demonstrates that modernizing with VSP One has the potential to achieve rapid ROI, cut complexity and give organizations the agility to scale and innovate."

Methodology and partner impacts

The TEI study included insights from organisations in information services, legal, and education. Forrester's methodology involved interviews with multiple users to build a representative financial model, which factored in user experiences and quantifiable results.

Findings also suggest advantages for channel partners and service providers. The report notes that partners leveraging VSP One can streamline deployment processes, reduce management complexity for users, and broaden services related to migration, optimisation, and hybrid cloud support.

The study forms part of Hitachi Vantara's ongoing initiative to provide third-party analysis to support the case for unified data platforms in the hybrid cloud era.