Is it possible to consistently get steep discounts from IT vendors?  The answer is YES! One method is a dual-vendor approach where procurement costs are lowered by having two vendors compete for your business.  To ensure discounting over time a user must be willing to deploy both vendors’ technologies.  Lowering IT procurement costs via a dual vendor approach is great strategy.   It also has the added value of not getting “locked-in” to a particular vendor/ manufacturer which gives you more flexibility.

A drawback to this approach is added complexity.  Even when deploying standards-based technology, a dual vendor approach will add some management complexity.  This complexity could increase operating expenses (OPEX) and therefore eat into CAPEX savings.

Is it possible to leverage a dual vendor approach and yet avoid increasing long term operating costs?  The answer could be yes.  One way is to segment the procurement according to logical platforms.  For example, a user may choose to deploy one networking vendor at the router and firewall level and another in the LAN.  In addition, given SAN management standards such as SMI-S it is easier now to deploy and manage multivendor storage devices in a SAN.  Finally, and maybe most importantly partnering with a systems integrator with multi-vendor expertise is essential.