Open Standards Migration:
From vendor lock-in to choice
Focal Point: Open Standards Migration
TorreyPoint methodology for open standards migration:
- Partner selection: We only represent companies that are committed to open standards and support customer choice.
- Interoperability testing: We verify interoperability in our own laboratories.
- Network assessment/migration analysis: Our analysis pinpoints proprietary solutions that should be migrated to open standards.
- In-house design expertise: Our architects design for scalability, reliability and flexibility.
- Freedom of choice: Our customers always play a critical role in choosing their network components.
Proprietary solutions limit choice and increase costs.
Open standards are one of the key enabling principles of the Internet. Game-changing inventions such as browsers, search engines, and social media would not have been possible without open standards. And open standards are fueling the next major innovation in networking—the cloud.
When it comes to the enterprise network, however, many organizations find themselves locked into proprietary solutions from one or two primary equipment vendors. Often these vendors adopt a non-standard technology for practical reasons, for example, to bring a new product to market before standards are finalized. In other cases, the motive is simply to retain customers by limiting their options.
In some isolated cases, organizations realize a short-term benefit by incorporating proprietary solutions into the corporate network. However, in the long run, proprietary products have negative impacts that far outweigh their advantages. They are more costly to maintain and manage, drive up support costs, and limit the customer’s ability to negotiate pricing and other terms.
You don’t have to buy into a vendor’s entire story to get access to the products and services you need to achieve your IT goals. TorreyPoint can show you a way out of the single-vendor trap.
The TorreyPoint Open Standards Migration solution helps customers move from single-vendor proprietary architectures to reliable, scalable multivendor solutions that enhance their ability to choose and minimize operating and capital costs.
Proprietary Solutions versus Open Standards
| Issue | Proprietary Solutions | Open Standards |
| Network Complexity | Growth by mergers and acquisitions creates portfolio of incompatible systems, increasing complexity | Interoperability of open-standards components simplifies network architecture |
| Support | Limited pool of specialists who can support/understand the proprietary solution | In-depth support by specialists |
| Operating Costs | Lock-in to aging infrastructure drives up operating costs | Simplified architecture based on open standards reduces operating costs |
| Capital Costs | Vendors set the price that their customers pay | Customers use competitive procurements to drive down capital costs |
| Supply Chain | Dependence on single vendor creates risk of unavailability | Multivendor strategy ensures timely availability of components |
Take a close look at your vendor’s claims.
TorreyPoint believes that every organization should take a careful look at the arguments raised by some network vendors in support of single-supplier, proprietary environments.
| Claim: | Adopting the vendor’s complete solution limits the overall complexity of the network. |
| Reality: | Most large equipment suppliers have grown their portfolios in part by acquiring companies and technologies that were not designed to work together. Far from limiting technology, these incompatible solutions may actually increase it. The true way to limit complexity is to adopt open standards as the guiding principle for the network. |
| Claim: | Working with a single vendor can offer superior support because their technical team supports the entire end-to-end solution. |
| Reality: | As a company acquires a broader range of technologies, the support organization often has trouble hiring and training staff. As a result, support is often provided by generalists who can only handle routine issues and must escalate support calls that require in-depth knowledge. Vendors who build their offerings on open standards know that their customers can easily switch vendors and therefore often focus on offering high-quality support to create customer loyalty. |
| Claim: | An end-to-end solution from a single vendor reduces operating costs. |
| Reality: | Locking customers into aging technologies actually increases support costs. In addition, having a single vendor limits the ability to negotiate pricing, so any savings in operating costs are more than offset by increased capital expenses. With open standards, customers are free to initiate competitive procurements as a means of obtaining the best possible price. |
| Claim: | Buying from a single vendor increases supply chain efficiencies. |
| Reality: | All major network equipment vendors have multiple suppliers for the critical components used in their products. Why shouldn't their customers adopt the same strategy? |
A carefully crafted multivendor strategy offers tangible benefits.
The need for a change in vendor strategy often is not apparent until the organization undertakes a major data center project such as network centralization, virtualization, or consolidation. Frequently these projects are underway when they hit a wall—a proprietary solution that cannot easily be swapped out without triggering a massive rip-and-replace operation that far exceeds the budget and time allotted to the project. These hard lessons point out the constraints and risks of a single-vendor strategy.
To align the IT infrastructure strategy with the organization’s business requirements, IT managers must be free to choose the best solutions regardless of vendor—something that is only possible with open standards. For customers who currently depend on single-vendor architectures, TorreyPoint can facilitate an orderly and timely migration to a multivendor approach that minimizes expenses and disruptions to ongoing operations.
TorreyPoint has years of engineering expertise in the networking business, which gives us a unique perspective on how to use open standards to foster innovation and prevent vendor lock-in. Our experience has led us to formulate a methodology to bring the benefits of open standards to our customers.
Partner selection: We select our technology partners based on their willingness to follow an open-standards model for all of their solutions. It goes against our philosophy and core values to box customers into a proprietary technology that cannot coexist with other vendors’ products.
Interoperability testing: Before we recommend a product to our customers, we evaluate it ourselves to ensure that it works with competitive products. Our labs are stocked with equipment from top networking vendors such as Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Fortinet, Aruba Networks, Brocade, and many others. We don’t rely on the vendor’s spec sheet—we run our own interoperability tests.
Network assessment and migration analysis: Our engineering consultants conduct a thorough analysis of the existing network, pinpointing the areas where proprietary solutions need to be migrated to open standards. Often this analysis leads to a redesign of sections of the architecture to more fully take advantage of the potential of open-standards components.
In-house design expertise: Our staff engineers come from a wide range of networking vendors, bringing in-depth, hands-on experience to the design process. We have designed some of the largest networks in the world where scalability, 24/7 reliability and flexibility were top requirements. TorreyPoint purposely selects best-in-class components that are built on open standards and have been certified in our own labs for interoperability
Freedom of choice: TorreyPoint’s architects involve customers in the design process so that we can take into account individual preferences and leverage the customer’s staff talents as much as possible. At the same time, we are not afraid to push back if we think that there’s a better solution from a different vendor. We believe in and advocate for the networking vendors that we represent, but our customers always have the final decision.
