Capabilities Overview    IDEAS for IT Vendors    IDEAS for IT Users 

Capabilities Overview

Ideas International (IDEAS) is a major mid-tier player in the global IT research market, offering a comprehensive top-to-bottom stack of research, advisory, consulting, and price/performance tracking and benchmarking capabilities for both the buy and sell sides of the IT industry.

Whether you are an IT vendor preparing for a product launch, or an end-user organization embarking on a new IT initiative, IDEAS can help you negotiate your latest strategic endeavor – with a full breadth of product offerings covering a broad range of requirements and decision points.

At IDEAS, our goal is to become the one-stop shop for all of your IT infrastructure research and analysis needs.

The key capabilities of our research and consulting portfolio are built into a customer-value information stack (which we refer to as the i~STACK) that flows from the bottom up as follows:

 

Competitive Profiles (CP) Family of Products

CP is the foundational layer for much of the research and analysis provided by Ideas International. As part of our Information Services layer, it provides a comprehensive reference database of key comparative product and service information on enabling components of datacenter IT infrastructure.

The comparative information scope includes product/service specifications, pricing and performance data, cost of ownership analysis, and market positioning information. CP includes many powerful tools such as the Competitive Landscape feature, a built-in solution configurator, and global pricing analysis reports.

Included within the current scope of CP is coverage of the following infrastructure topics:

  • Servers – UNIX servers, industry-standard servers, blades, workstations, estimated server performance matching
  • Storage – storage arrays, SAN equipment, storage software, tape and backup products
  • System Software – operating systems, database software
  • Infrastructure Services – warranty service offerings, post-warranty service offerings, software support services, mission-critical and high-availability service and support offerings

As a complement to CP, we offer the Consolidation Analysis Report (CAR), a powerful research tool that provides an independent analyst-lead estimate of server performance at every configuration point for current and historical server products. This information is invaluable in exercises such as server consolidation, where relative server performance asset values need to be modeled.

     

 

Retainer Analyst Advisory Services

Our in-house analysts are widely recognized by the industry as thought leaders in IT infrastructure analysis.

Their regular insights are made available through a retainer service, which also includes on-call discussion time with the analyst for expert advice on your own related issues.
     
 

Competitive Positioning Support

Of specific value to the IT vendor community is our competitive positioning capability, whereby we apply our expert analytical skills toward the creation of sales-focused materials such as competitive sales guides, sales training manuals, and sales tactics documents.
 

Custom Consulting, Advice, and Counsel

Our team of expert industry analysts is available to work with you on projects of your own choice wherever their specialized skills can help you meet your own business objectives.

Typical consulting activities include go-to-market white papers, RFP tender evaluation, market requirements analyses, strategic advice on IT infrastructure choices, industry speaking engagements, and litigation support.