We did not evaluate any other competitors.

We evaluated all the big names: Hitachi, EMC, NetApp, and HPE.

I think we were looking at cost. We were also looking at the technical aspects of where we had requirements up front that we were looking for from every one of the vendors. We had a list of requirements. They were listed in their priority from highest priority, even to the very lowest. Some of them maybe weren't even requirements, but we added them in there. They had to meet at least the first top seven or eight. IBM seemed to meet those, and exceed them, so that was one of the reasons why we chose them.

I have evaluated Cohesity, Veeam, and Commvault.

EMC originally was on my list when we were refreshing again six years ago. I decided to introduce EMC back into the fold to create competition. The reason IBM Storage won out over EMC and Hitachi was just performance. It scaled and performed better in our tests and PoCs. There was not enough of a business reason for me to completely change vendors. 

The typical three competitors that I hear about nowadays:

1. EMC has always been a strong one, but they have faded a little bit.
2. Pure has come on strong.
3. Hitachi seems to have gained some traction recently. 

Customers chose Spectrum Virtualize because of the features that SVC has and its maturity. The product has been around for so long, plus I get involved with customers that select SVC. They can buy a cheap storage system and not invest as heavily in the software layer. However, from the SVC level, they get the whole storage virtualization and whatever they feel is the top tier storage behind the SVC realizing the best of both worlds.

Our customers usually evaluate Dell EMC and Hitachi, but also some of the other newer flash environments, like Compellent. 

We didn't really consider any alternatives. We're pretty much an IBM shop, so it was like the leader when it came out. We value compatibility and price, obviously.

I'm a technician. I don't care about price per se. I am more involved in the technical advantages, ease of implementation, and stability. They are probably the key factors for me.

We have another EMC brand storage product also, but we are using both of them.

Of course, the product is the most important criteria for vendor selection.

It's the best mainframe storage available. It is much better than EMC and other competitors.

We looked at Hitachi, EMC, and NetApp. The major boys.

We evaluated the Hitachi RV series. I think it was Z100 at that time, and IBM SVC. We tested three solutions and chose IBM SVC to virtualize the environment.

We were looking for stability, such as in the features search and the ease of manageability compared to other products. These products included EMC, Hitachi, and Red Hat.

I did not look at any alternatives.

We looked all over the place. But we found what we wanted with this solution.

Recently with the many storage virtualisation solutions now available, consideration of other products depends on the size of the customer and their requirements, and what vendor/technology provider may already exist in their organisation.

We evaluated FalconStor and DataCore. This was based on installing software somewhere on the server. This was software for storage from a very early version in 2008/2009. We don't trust them, so that's why we chose an appliance level from IBM.

When looking at vendors, we look at their ability to perform and give good support.

We deal with multiple vendors. We go from Cisco, to IBM, to EMC when we talk about clients. But I don't know how to answer this question from the perspective you are asking about. It is from a different point of view.

For one, there are very few vendors that actually offer this product on the market. And nobody has the quality feature set that IBM has.

We were looking for quality, support, and service. These are all the normal things most companies look for.

No. Competitor products just did not offer the features we required.

We've compared it to other platforms like EMC. This product is really intuitive. It is really easy to use. So from that point of view, it's really good.

We looked at other solutions namely EMC and IBM.

When I am selecting a vendor I look at the support as well and not just the product. It's the complete ecosystem of the product and support that we evaluate, before selecting a vendor.

One other vendor we considered was EMC, but this particular product really has some cool features as compared to the competitor's products.