Many factors contribute to the ownership cost for enterprise storage. These include (but are not limited to): physical capacity relative to physical space requirements, performance capacity for data transfer and system reaction time, software maintenance and updates, expandability and flexibility, hardware purchase price, software licensing costs, hardware expansion or upgrade costs, administrator training, and more.

Edison analysts put the management software of the HP EVA system, NetApp system and EMC system through a series of typical day-to-day storage management tasks. Read about their results in this TCO analysis.