The Total Economic Impact™

Of Amazon FSx For NetApp

ONTAP
Cost Savings And Business Benefits
Enabled By Amazon FSx For NetApp ONTAP

February 2023

A FORRESTER TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ STUDY COMMISSIONED BY AMAZON

Table Of Contents Consulting Team: Luca Son
Uddhav Bagrodia
Executive Summary ................................................. 1 Sam Sexton
The Amazon FSx For NetApp ONTAP Customer
Journey ..................................................................... 6
Key Challenges ...................................................... 6
Why Amazon FSx For NetApp ONTAP? ................ 7
Composite Organization ......................................... 8
Analysis Of Benefits ................................................ 9
Technology Cost Savings....................................... 9
Operational Efficiency .......................................... 11
Migration Time To Value ...................................... 13
Unquantified Benefits ........................................... 15
Flexibility ............................................................... 16
Analysis Of Costs .................................................. 17
Licensing Costs .................................................... 17
Financial Summary ................................................ 19
Appendix A: Total Economic Impact ................... 20
Appendix B: Endnotes .......................................... 21

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THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP

 Executive Summary
Self-managing storage can be a challenge for organizations, and it can result in an
inability to scale, introduce greater outage and security risks, and increase expenditures
with vendors, all while reliability and performance suffer. By shifting from a self-managed
operating model to a cloud-storage-as-a-service model, organizations optimize costs,
storage provisioning and scaling, performance, and availability, without incurring the cost
of expensive skill sets.

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is an Amazon Web

Services (AWS) solution that provides fully managed KEY STATISTICS
shared storage built on the ONTAP storage operating
system. It allows organizations to efficiently migrate
workloads to AWS, build applications, modernize
data management, and simplify business continuity.
FSx for ONTAP combines ONTAP’s data access with
the availability, security, and scalability of AWS along Return on investment (ROI) Net present value (NPV)
with integration with other AWS services. 61% $1.62M
AWS and NetApp commissioned Forrester
Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™
(TEI) study and examine the potential return on organization that consumes 350 terabytes of storage
investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by in year 1 to 950 terabytes of storage by year 3.
deploying FSx for ONTAP.1 The purpose of this study These interviewees noted that prior to using FSx for
is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the ONTAP, their organizations used self-managed
potential financial impact of FSx for ONTAP on their NetApp solutions alongside other vendor storage
organizations. solutions. However, the interviewees’ organizations
To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks incurred large capital expenditures and operational
associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed inefficiencies, they had difficulty deploying and
five representatives from four organizations using scaling storage, and they risked failures and
FSx for ONTAP. For the purposes of this study, vulnerabilities.
Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences After investing in FSx for ONTAP, the interviewees’
and combined the results into a single composite organizations realized greater storage consumption
and cost efficiencies, which allowed them to grow
their storage footprints over time without incurring
high up-front costs and low utilization. The
Labor efficiency lift by
organizations shifted their internal resources away
migrating to AWS
from self-managing environments, which allowed

45% them to dedicate their time to strategic tasks.

Interviewees reported their organizations increased

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 1

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

migration speeds and accuracy compared to using Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value
other cloud storage solutions, which reduced risk. for the composite organization but are not quantified
in this study include:
KEY FINDINGS
Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted • Ease of training and use due to NetApp
present value (PV) quantified benefits for the familiarity. The composite saves time on training
composite organization include: and other costs due to preexisting familiarity with
the ONTAP environment.
• Technology cost savings of 31%. The
composite organization moves its storage to • Improved employee and user experiences.
AWS and saves 31% of its total technology costs The composite reduces and eliminates manual
as compared to its prior, self-managed tasks, planning sessions, procurement cycles,
environment. These savings, which include and outage windows, and this makes it easier for
hardware, procurement, provisioning, licensing, storage and application administrators to do the
and additional cost savings, are worth a three- work they were hired to do. Existing familiarity
year, risk-adjusted $3.2 million to the composite with ONTAP also drives ease of use for users.
organization. • Reduced risk with multi-availability zones
• Operational efficiency gains of 45%. The (multi-AZ) disaster recovery and backup.
composite organization realizes a 45% lift in labor AWS’ native backup and disaster recovery
efficiency by moving from its legacy environment support critical environments and ensure high
to an AWS-managed environment, allowing data resiliency.
resources to shift their focus to higher-value • Reduced migration and operational risk. AWS
tasks. The composite organization streamlines enables better performance, less manual effort,
and eliminates costs associated with capacity and a more reliable environment. This lowers the
planning, time spent on change management and risk for day-to-day operations and large, one-off
vendor calls, ongoing provisioning, manual migration projects.
patching, and hardware upgrades, and breaking
down siloes that separate teams. The composite • Improved security posture. AWS and NetApp’s
realizes a risk-adjusted, three-year total benefit of native security features lower risk, improve
$660,500 in operational efficiency. uptime, and provide robust security for the
composite organization.
• Faster migration time to value of 40%. The
composite organization realizes one-time • Improved vendor ecosystem and easier
migration savings because FSx for ONTAP integrations. FSx for ONTAP accommodates
allows block replication using NetApp preexisting application integrations, which
SnapMirror. This saves the composite’s FTEs simplifies the composite organization’s
from having to write migration scripts and refactor technology infrastructure and billing.
applications, which reduces the total amount of • Seamless hybrid storage infrastructure. On-
time required to migrate by nearly five months premises NetApp data can still function and work
compared to what the organization would require well with FSx for ONTAP, meaning that the
with other cloud storage solutions. This provides composite organization can choose whether its
the composite organization with one-time, risk- data lives in the cloud or on-premises without
adjusted savings of $469,500. having to worry about compatibility.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 2

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Costs. Three-year, risk-adjusted PV costs for the

composite organization include:

• Licensing costs. The composite organization is

billed based on gigabytes of data consumed in
AWS which is divided by the percentage of solid
state drives (SSDs), capacity pool, and backup
storage consumed. For the composite
organization, these total a risk-adjusted, three-
year cost of $2.7 million.

The representative interviews and financial analysis

found that a composite organization experiences
benefits of $4.29 million over three years versus
costs of $2.7 million, adding up to a net present value
(NPV) of $1.62 million and an ROI of 61%.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 3

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

ROI BENEFITS PV NPV

61% $4.29M $1.62M

Benefits (Three-Year)

Technology cost savings $3.2M

Operational efficiency $660.5K

Migration time to value $469.5K

“Not only are we obtaining improved

storage costs, but we are also saving
time and resources to manage our
environment. We also maintain equal or
better performance, higher availability,
and better disaster recovery.”
— Chief technology officer, healthcare
THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 4
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

TEI FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY

From the information provided in the interviews, DUE DILIGENCE
Interviewed AWS stakeholders and Forrester
Forrester constructed a Total Economic Impact™
analysts to gather data relative to FSx for
framework for those organizations considering an
investment in FSx for ONTAP. ONTAP.

The objective of the framework is to identify the cost, INTERVIEWS

benefit, flexibility, and risk factors that affect the Interviewed five representatives at four
investment decision. Forrester took a multistep organizations using FSx for ONTAP to obtain
approach to evaluate the impact that FSx for ONTAP data with respect to costs, benefits, and risks.
can have on an organization.

COMPOSITE ORGANIZATION
Designed a composite organization based on
the characteristics of the interviewees’
organizations.

FINANCIAL MODEL FRAMEWORK

Constructed a financial model representative of
the interviews using the TEI methodology and
risk-adjusted the financial model based on
DISCLOSURES
issues and concerns of the interviewees.
Readers should be aware of the following:

This study is commissioned by Amazon Web Services

and delivered by Forrester Consulting. It is not meant to CASE STUDY
be used as a competitive analysis. Employed four fundamental elements of TEI in
Forrester makes no assumptions as to the potential ROI modeling the investment impact: benefits, costs,
that other organizations will receive. Forrester strongly flexibility, and risks. Given the increasing
advises that readers use their own estimates within the
framework provided in the study to determine the
sophistication of ROI analyses related to IT
appropriateness of an investment in Amazon FSx for investments, Forrester’s TEI methodology
NetApp ONTAP.
provides a complete picture of the total
AWS reviewed and provided feedback to Forrester, but economic impact of purchase decisions. Please
Forrester maintains editorial control over the study and its
findings and does not accept changes to the study that
see Appendix A for additional information on the
contradict Forrester’s findings or obscure the meaning of TEI methodology.
the study.

AWS provided the customer names for the interviews but

did not participate in the interviews.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 5

The Amazon FSx For NetApp ONTAP Customer Journey
Drivers leading to the FSx for ONTAP investment

Interviews
Storage consumed
Role Industry Annual revenue Region in Amazon FSx for
NetApp ONTAP
Chief technology officer Healthcare $15B+ Australia 1.6 PB

IT director Energy $100B+ US 500 TB

• Director of cloud
UK headquarters, global
infrastructure services Media $4B+
operations 400 GB
• Storage administrator lead
US headquarters, global
Chief technology leader Technology $50B+ N/A
operations

KEY CHALLENGES
Before implementing Amazon FSx for NetApp
ONTAP, the interviewees’ organizations self-
“As we’re moving to cloud, we’re
managed their storage environments using NetApp
solutions and other vendors, both on-premises and in
looking to adopt PAAS (platform-
the cloud. This led them to incur greater storage as-a-service) wherever
infrastructure costs and other data center fees. The possible.”
interviewees noted how their organizations struggled
with common challenges, including:
Chief technology officer, healthcare
• Capital-intensive expenditures for
procurement, installation, and maintenance.
Self-managing storage incurred large fees for the and greater toil for their storage teams,
interviewees’ organizations in hardware particularly across hardware planning and
procurement, refresh cycles, maintenance, and procurement, maintenance, addressing planned
management. The chief technology officer for a and unplanned outages, and additional
healthcare organization told Forrester: “We administrative work.
tended to buy hardware [in] a five-year cycle with
a five-year support and maintenance [cycle].” He The IT director at an energy organization told
stated that procurement and implementation Forrester: “It takes 3 to 4 hours to patch each
were difficult on-premises and took, “eight weeks device, which requires our team to take down the
to procure and implement new hardware through services and create an outage window. Our users
existing partner contracts, longer if we had to want us to do those [things] on weekends and
establish new agreements.” after hours. During those weekends, our team is
• Myriad operational inefficiencies from self- doing administrative work for each one of those
managed storage. The organizations’ prior devices by putting out a change, coordinating
environments introduced operational efficiencies with users to find outage windows, and

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 6

 THE AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP CUSTOMER JOURNEY

requesting approvals. It’s a lot of administrative backward to push out 10 times and
work.” getting failures 10% [to] 20% of the time.”

• Inability to scale to meet growing business ▪ The IT director at the energy organization
demands. Interviewees said their organizations said unplanned outages cost hundreds of
struggled to scale their legacy on-premises thousands of dollars. He said: “AWS
environments to keep up with cloud manages patches, upgrades, and all that
modernization goals and growing business for us. We have had a hard time
demands. The director of cloud infrastructure coordinating with application owners to
services for a media organization described one take outages and do the patching. We did
such impediment to scaling their firm’s business- not do it, and [we] fell behind in service
critical application with how the company packs across the enterprise. … It’s safe to
previously maintained its storage environment. say there are several hundred thousand
They said: “Instead of having shared storage dollars of additional impacts from the
access [of] let’s say 10 nodes for a primary original outage that had occurred.”
application server, we had to create 10 individual
copies of the same data using self-managed
storage instead. … Every time we had to make a
change, we had to do it 10 times instead of
“FSx for ONTAP provides that
once.”
same ease and comfort that you
• Risk of vulnerabilities, outages, and failures. have with [NetApp].”
Interviewees told Forrester that self-managing
storage environments inevitably led to
vulnerabilities, incidents, patching efforts, and
IT director, energy
increased risk for their organizations.

▪ The chief technology leader for a

technology organization explained, “Our WHY AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP?
prior solution’s management console
The interviewees said their organizations chose
didn’t actually show us results [to help
Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP to achieve the
with data management and security].”
following results:
▪ The director of cloud infrastructure
• Shift from a self-managed model to a storage-
services for a media organization said:
as-a-service model. The chief technology officer
“[Our legacy solution incurred] 10 times
at the healthcare organization told Forrester: “We
the cost, but the biggest pain point was
are going to [a] cloud-first [model], like most other
operational. Instead of pushing it out once
organizations, to enable us to get better agility,
using CI (continuous integration)/CD
get greater scale, and move to more of a
(continuous deployment) pipelines, our
consistent opex model rather than this heavy
application developers had to push it out
capex [model] every five [to] six years. … [The]
10 times. … As a result, they would
ONTAP solution had similar or better
sometimes have failures and [would have]
performance than our on-premises solution,
to repush it again. It was a huge step
whereas a lot of the other cloud native storage

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 7

 THE AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP CUSTOMER JOURNEY

solutions, they have different tiering and as you block level. Because there were about 1.6
go to the higher tiers for performance, then you petabytes to be migrated, that took a significant
pay a premium. FSx for ONTAP already has amount of time to replicate.”
those higher performance characteristics at that
• Naturally fit with and merge with existing tech
lower price point.”
stacks and integrations. Interviewees said FSx
• Improve agility, scalability, and performance for ONTAP supported existing environments,
by moving to cloud-first infrastructure. applications, and skill sets.
Interviewees shared the goal of improving their
COMPOSITE ORGANIZATION
organizations’ business velocities by moving to
FSx for ONTAP. The chief technology leader in Based on the interviews, Forrester constructed a TEI

the technology industry described their framework, a composite company, and an ROI
organization’s main business objectives: “Our analysis that illustrates the areas financially affected.
goals going forward [are] about what you can do The composite organization is representative of the

from a scalability perspective and from solving five interviewees and is used to present the

strategic business problems. [FSx for ONTAP] aggregate financial analysis in the next section. The

provides faster access to storage and helps us composite organization has the following

be more competitive while lowering costs over characteristics:

time.” Description of composite. Before investing in

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, the global,
• Streamline operations and ease of
enterprise-level composite organization uses NetApp
administration while leveraging existing skill
on-premises alongside other vendor technology for
sets. The director of cloud infrastructure services
storage management. The composite migrates 1
at a media organization said: “FSx for ONTAP
petabyte of self-managed storage in its legacy
took the best of both worlds. We wanted a
environment to AWS. In FSx for ONTAP, the
solution that was native AWS and [required] a
composite consumes 350 terabytes of storage in year
low effort for maintenance. We don’t want to have
1 and 950 terabytes of storage by year 3.
to hire a bunch of people that are ultra-familiar
and in the weeds with ONTAP and all the Deployment characteristics. The organization runs
maintenance, updates, and everything around it. Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP for business
We also don’t want to spend an arm and a leg on application storage.
network costs.”

• Improve disaster-recovery capabilities for

business-critical applications. Interviewees
said their organizations chose AWS in part due to
its disaster-recovery capabilities that reduced Key Assumptions
business risk across use cases. • Global, enterprise-level
• Increase migration speed and accuracy while organization
reducing risk. The chief technology officer at a • Consumes
healthcare organization stated: “We picked
approximately 1 PB of
[AWS] because we wanted to use the replication
between the on-prem side and the cloud
storage by year 3
environment that allowed us to replicate at a

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 8

Analysis Of Benefits
Quantified benefit data as applied to the composite

Total Benefits
Present
Ref. Benefit Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total
Value
Atr Technology cost savings $705,841 $1,310,847 $1,915,853 $3,932,540 $3,164,426

Btr Operational efficiency $265,585 $265,585 $265,585 $796,755 $660,470

Ctr Migration time to value $516,415 $0 $0 $516,415 $469,468

Total benefits (risk-adjusted) $1,487,841 $1,576,432 $2,181,438 $5,245,710 $4,294,364

TECHNOLOGY COST SAVINGS

Evidence and data. Interviewees’ organizations
“We can provision a new file
realized technology hardware, infrastructure, and
licensing cost savings when they migrated from self- system in minutes and easily
managed storage to FSx for ONTAP. By switching to scale our cloud pipelines. We
AWS, they avoided up-front costs for hardware, couldn’t do that in our on-
servers, data center licensing, and other related premises model.”
costs. Instead of provisioning and paying for
multiyear storage up front like the organizations did in
Chief technology officer, healthcare
their prior environments, they paid for what they
used, which allowed them to expand their footprints
over time.

Additionally, interviewees’ organizations optimized • The IT director at the energy organization

costs and performance with the AWS tiered pricing explained how their organization reduced its total
model that allows customers to select the storage storage consumption. He said: “We’re able to
type, input/output operations per second (IOPS), and store more things in the same amount of space.
throughput depending on their business For example, if you’re storing the same file in two
requirements. AWS and NetApp’s compression, different locations on your shared drive, NetApp
duplication, and other features drove further can see that all the same type of data is stored
efficiencies and cost savings. twice. It will save it once and have a pointer in
one place to the other behind the scenes, so it
• The chief technology leader in the technology
doesn’t have to [physically] store that same file
industry said their organization saved roughly
twice on the storage. … As we migrate some of
25% of its technology costs after its first year
our on-premises workloads to FSx for ONTAP,
using FSx for ONTAP. They said, “We’ve been
we are able to retire the physical equipment on-
doing it for roughly 18 months now, and …
premises. There are savings of ongoing
[during] the first year, it was cheaper by roughly
maintenance support for those hardware devices
25%.”

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 9

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

that we pay for that can actually be per device. Modeling and assumptions. For the composite
Just a rule of thumb is probably about $5,000 a organization, Forrester assumes the following:
month.”
• The composite organization incurs AWS fees of
• The chief technology officer at the healthcare $567,168 in Year 1, $1,053,312 in Year 2, and
organization told Forrester: “The lion’s share of $1,539,456 in Year 3.
the initial costs are the procurement,
• The composite scales its consumption in AWS
provisioning, and establishment of a storage
from 35% of 1PB in Year 1 to 65% and 95% in
array when you first provision it. After you’ve
Years 2 and 3, respectively.
done that piece, in an operational sense the
costs shift towards provisioning and technology • The cost of hosting equivalent storage on-
lifecycle management to support application premises is equal to an additional 31% cost each
growth.” year.

Risks. Factors that could impact the size of this

benefit for organizations include:
Avoided additional • Prior costs of hosting storage on-premises
technology costs
• Reduction of costs by shifting to AWS.

31% Results. To account for these risks, Forrester

adjusted this benefit downward by 5%, yielding a
three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%)
of $3.2 million.

Technology Cost Savings

Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

A1 Cost of AWS Interviews $567,168 $1,053,312 $1,539,456

Additional cost of hosting equivalent

A2 storage on premises spread over three Interviews 31% 31% 31%
years

At Technology cost savings A1*(1+A2) $742,990 $1,379,839 $2,016,687

Risk adjustment ↓5%

Atr Technology cost savings (risk-adjusted) $705,841 $1,310,847 $1,915,853

Three-year total: $3,932,540 Three-year present value: $3,164,426

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 10

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY there [was] a whole interaction between the

application or host administrators with the
Evidence and data. Interviewees’ organizations
storage people to allocate storage. … With [the]
improved operational efficiency after investing in
NetApp ONTAP offering, all that is taken care of,
Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP. The organizations
and the host administrator calls an API to
reduced or eliminated procurement and provisioning
allocate.”
efforts, ongoing maintenance, patching efforts, and
management of redundant systems. This allowed ▪ The same interviewee shared: “We can
administrators to refocus their time to other strategic manage their multiple file systems using
tasks while also increasing business velocity and one management console — one AWS
application and service time to value. command-line interface across the board
… that helps us achieve more efficiency,
The chief technology leader in the technology
which translates into lower costs.”
industry explained how FSx for ONTAP provided their
organization with further cost savings by allowing ▪ The IT director in the energy industry
employees to use their newly freed-up time on other described how AWS’s time-savings
endeavors. The leader said: “We’ve seen typically a helped their organization make steady
30% reduction in labor improvement in how much progress toward leaving a data center. He
time [employees] get back. It’s about how much time said: “The other savings is that my team
they can devote to the other activities, learnings, and doesn’t have to physically go over to the
high-value situations that we think are more data center to configure disk drives,
appropriate for them.” power supplies, or hardware. We save on
support of that physical hardware. … It’s
probably about $7,000 a month in
maintenance support. … It’s worth it to
have our people freed from these
Operational efficiency lift
administrative day-to-day environment
with Amazon FSx for support tasks. … It’s supporting our
NetApp ONTAP cloud-first direction. … It’s in support of us

45% •
trying to get out of the data center.”

Reduced patching efforts. The storage

administrator lead in the media industry said their
organization saved hours of configuration,
Interviewees shared the following drivers for deployment, and patching time. They said: “[FSx
improved operational efficiency: for ONTAP] really reduced the time of
configuration deployment and bringing the app
• Streamlined storage provisioning and
back online. For example, it might take a
management. The chief technology officer in the
patching system where you had 10 people 12
healthcare industry explained that before using
hours. Whereas, right now, you might bring it
AWS, their organization needed to pay for
down to 3 or 4 hours.”
individual racks, teams managing and linking
racks, and ongoing application administrators ▪ The IT director in the energy industry
working with storage administrators. The CTO stated that their organization found
said: “[In our legacy on-premises environment], significant savings in patching its

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 11

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

environments since moving to AWS. He • Number of employees required to manage

said: “They’ll manage patches, upgrades, storage prior to AWS.
and all that for us. … We had a hard time
• Size of labor efficiency improvement.
getting outage windows. … With AWS
management, we can indicate to app • Fully burdened storage FTE salary.
owners, ‘Here’s what’s going to happen.’”

▪ The chief technology officer at the

healthcare organization said: “We don’t
have to worry about any product patching, “The capabilities [of FSx for
operating-system patching, or any of that. ONTAP] lead to the time savings
We also don’t have to manage the and agility we get. It’s essentially
contract for the managed services.”
the capability improvement and
Modeling and assumptions. For the composite speed of execution.”
organization, Forrester assumes the following:

• The composite organization previously required Director of cloud infrastructure

four FTEs to manage its legacy environment. services, media
• The composite experiences a 45% labor
efficiency lift in savings on patching,
configuration, and management of redundant
instances. Results. To account for these risks, Forrester
adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a
• The composite needs 2.2 FTEs to manage its
three-year, risk-adjusted total PV of $660,500.
new environment.

• The fully burdened annual salary of a storage

systems engineer is $163,941.

Risks. Factors that could impact the size of this

benefit for organizations include:

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 12

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

Operational Efficiency
Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
Number of FTEs required in legacy
B1 Composite 4.0 4.0 4.0
environment

B2 Labor efficiency lift by migrating to AWS Interviews 45% 45% 45%

B3 Number of FTEs required with AWS B1-(B1*B2) 2.2 2.2 2.2

Storage systems engineer fully burdened

B4 TEI standard $163,941 $163,941 $163,941
annual salary

Bt Operational efficiency (B1-B3)*B4 $295,094 $295,094 $295,094

Risk adjustment ↓10%

Btr Operational efficiency (risk-adjusted) $265,585 $265,585 $265,585

Three-year total: $796,755 Three-year present value: $660,470

MIGRATION TIME TO VALUE

Evidence and data. Interviewees told Forrester that
investing in FSx for ONTAP expedited their “AWS helped de-risk our
organizations’ migration speeds, efficiency, and migration projects by using FSx
accuracy away from on-premises data centers and for ONTAP features, the initial
other legacy environments as compared to moving to
migration and ongoing data
other cloud solutions. This reduced business risk and
synchronization was pretty much
increased migration success, which was particularly
urgent in high-priority environments.
automatic.”
The chief technology officer at the healthcare Chief technology officer, healthcare
organization said: “We didn’t have to refactor the
storage using this solution. We didn’t have to back
up, restore, redeploy, set up a whole new storage
farm, test it, build it, do all the performance testing, • In addition, the same interviewee said their
and so on because NetApp was already a known organization’s migration project length would
solution. It allowed us literally to replicate and turn it double without FSx for ONTAP. He said: “If we
on.” had to refactor it ourselves, we would have had
to put more FTEs against it. … We wouldn’t have
As a result, the organization reduced the number of
replicated things up there as quickly. … It might
FTEs required for migration by 50%. The director
have doubled our time [to migrate].”
stated: “We would have had about probably five to six
people in the migration team as opposed to the three • The same interviewee provided an example. He
[who] manage it. … And I’m not sure if we would said: “We have a direct connection between our
have gotten the same performance and ease of data center and AWS. It allows us to block
availability.” replicate using the NetApp SnapMirror, which
allows [us] to do a block-based replication at the

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 13

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

lower storage level without having to write a • Each migration without AWS requires 12 months
whole bunch of migration scripts.” AWS.

• Migrating to FSx for ONTAP requires 3.5 FTEs

and saves 4.8 months.
Reduction in migration time Risks. The following factors can impact the size of
this benefit for organizations:

40%
• Time required to migrate before using AWS and
after AWS.

• Number and type of FTEs required for migrations

before using AWS and after AWS.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite • Size of environment and number of migrations
organization, Forrester assumes the following: required.

• The composite organization undergoes one Results. To account for these risks, Forrester
migration of 1PB of data. adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a
three-year, risk-adjusted total PV of $469,500.
• Each migration without AWS requires five FTEs
AWS.

Migration Time To Value

Ref. Metric Source Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

C1 Number of migrations Composite 1.0 0 0

Headcount required per migration onto

C2 Composite 5.0 0 0
non-FSx for ONTAP cloud solution

C3 Migration length without AWS (months) Interviews 12.0 0 0

Subtotal: Total FTEs required to migrate

C4 C1*C2*(C3/12) 5.0 0 0
without AWS
Headcount avoided per migration with
C5 C2*50% 2.5 0 0
AWS

C6 Migration time avoided with AWS C3*40% 4.8 0 0

Subtotal: Total FTEs required per (C2-C5)*((C3-C6

C7 1.5 0 0
migration with AWS )/12)

C8 Avoided FTEs per migration C4-C7 3.5 0 0

Ct Migration time to value C8*B4 $573,795 $0 $0

Risk adjustment ↓10%

Ctr Migration time to value (risk-adjusted) $516,415 $0 $0

Three-year total: $516,415 Three-year present value: $469,468

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 14

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

UNQUANTIFIED BENEFITS NetApp environments drove ease of use for

Interviewees mentioned the following additional users. The director of cloud infrastructure
benefits that their organizations experienced but were services for the media organization stated,
not able to quantify: “Ultimately, the other teams we work with are
much happier [now] that [FSx for ONTAP] exists.”
• Ease of training and use due to ONTAP
familiarity. Interviewees’ organizations saved on • Improved performance and availability. While
training time and costs due to familiarity with the interviewees were only able to quantify the cost
environment. The organizations also streamlined savings of their organizations’ new storage
operations through familiar capabilities used in environments, several believed their
their prior environments. The director of cloud organization’s new environment yielded better
infrastructure services told Forrester: “It will allow performance. The storage administrator lead for
us to essentially replace a lot of those capabilities the media organization told Forrester, “We’ve
in NetApp using this technology instead. Our been 100% available except for scheduled
familiarity with the platform helps. For example, maintenance on other pieces, but not for FSx for
we need to replicate to lower environments. We ONTAP.”
can use the built-in technologies to replicate that • Reduced risk with multi-AZ disaster recovery
to lower environments and create clones of that and backup. The chief technology officer at a
without using additional storage. [That means] it healthcare organization shared: “AWS has native
creates a full additional copy to run some other failover capabilities in near-real time across
environments.” availability zones within AWS, which basically
▪ The IT director at the energy organization allows us to do disaster recovery or high
stated: “Ramp-up time with AWS was availability a lot cleaner. It’s one of those
very quick. We are very familiar with environments where if you’ve got a very critical
NetApp already both in the cloud and on- environment that needs high performance, but
premises. There’s not a whole lot of you want to keep your cost basis down, it’s a
training.” target point for storage.”

▪ The chief technology officer for the The chief technology leader at a technology
healthcare organization told Forrester, organization told Forrester: “[FSx for ONTAP] is
“Teams that have existing experience with excellent for backup and recovery, especially
NetApp on-prem are easily able to since storage is a critical part of our overall
transition to using FSx for ONTAP.” This architecture, how this impacts a chief technology
indicates that even new hires with leader, and how it impacts our clients. It ties into
preexisting NetApp familiarity can quickly the overall process of resiliency [on] the data
get up to speed and ready to go with FSx side.”
for ONTAP. • Reduced migration and operational risk.
• Improved employee and user experiences. Interviewees said AWS enabled better
Eliminating manual tasks, planning sessions, performance, less manual effort, and a more
procurement cycles, and outage windows made it reliable environment. This lowered the risk for
easier for storage and application administrators day-to-day operations and large, one-off
to do the work they were hired to do. Having a migration projects.
familiar environment with the capabilities of prior

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 15

 ANALYSIS OF BENEFITS

• Improved security posture. The chief just a stand-alone NetApp offering. In AWS, it’s
technology leader at the technology organization fully integrated with all the compatible AWS
praised AWS and NetApp’s embedded security offerings. The virtual private cloud (VPC), identity
features. They said: “We’re always concerned management, key management, and all the
about security. AWS is as secure as any public components that are there in [AWS]
cloud out there. Our biggest concern is CloudFormation allow us to utilize all the native
encryption due to the increased sophistication of AWS toolsets around the storage offering.”
hackers breaking through encryption. … But
The IT director at the energy organization said:
because ONTAP supports strong encryption type
“We get quicker resolution on issues because we
languages, that’s a big benefit.”
now immediately go to AWS. Being part of the
• Seamless hybrid storage infrastructure. On- AWS ecosystem means the whole procurement
premises NetApp data can still function and work process, licensing, and billing is all one. In the
well with FSx for ONTAP, meaning that past, we paid monthly for the storage cost [of our
organizations can choose whether data lives in legacy storage solution] because it’s AWS
the cloud or on-premises without having to worry storage, but then we also paid an annual license
about compatibility. cost. We avoid that NetApp component which [is]
all managed one stop with AWS.”

• Ease of adoption and future migrations. The

chief technology officer at the healthcare
“As far as the speed of
organization said: “We know data gets into [AWS]
migration, it’s so much faster to accurately. It allows migration to happen with the
be able to do what we’re talking greatest amount of ease [and] without too much
about compared to on-prem.” manual intervention. We can use the same
repeatable patent for any future application with a
Chief technology leader, technology
big storage footprint that we need to migrate.”

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as

part of a specific project (described in more detail in
FLEXIBILITY Appendix A).

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer.

There are multiple scenarios in which a customer
might implement FSx for ONTAP and later realize
additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Improved vendor ecosystem, easier

integrations, and simplified billing
management. Having access to the AWS and
NetApp ecosystems made it easier for the
interviewees’ organizations to consider and
integrate other products as needed. The chief
technology officer at the healthcare organization
stated: “Our previous on-premises offering was

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 16

Analysis Of Costs
Quantified cost data as applied to the composite

Total Costs
Present
Ref. Cost Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total
Value
Dtr Licensing costs $0 $595,526 $1,105,978 $1,616,429 $3,317,933 $2,669,866

Total costs (risk-

$0 $595,526 $1,105,978 $1,616,429 $3,317,933 $2,669,866
adjusted)

• Percentage and cost of storage on AWS that is

LICENSING COSTS
SSD, capacity pool, or backup storage.
Evidence and data. Interviewees told Forrester that
FSx for ONTAP was built into their organizations’ Results. To account for these risks, Forrester
overall AWS prices. adjusted this cost upward by 5%, yielding a three-
year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of
Organizations pay primarily based on how much
$2.7 million.
storage they consume in AWS. And organizations
pay varying fees depending on SSD storage,
capacity pool storage, backup storage, and regions.

Modeling and assumptions. For the composite

organization, Forrester assumes the following:

• The composite starts with 35% of its storage

consumed in AWS, and this percentage rises to
65% in Year 2 and to 95% in Year 3.

• The composite has 20% of its storage on SSD

and pays $0.25 per gigabyte.

• The composite has 80% of its storage as

capacity pool storage, and it pays $0.04 per
gigabyte.

• The composite pays for 20% backup storage,

and it pays $0.05 per gigabyte.

• The composite’s migration labor costs are not

calculated for the purposes of this study.

Risks. Factors that could impact the size of this cost

for organizations include:

• Total amount and percentage of data consumed

in AWS.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 17

 ANALYSIS OF COSTS

Licensing Costs
Ref. Metric Source Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
D1 Total gigabytes consumed with FSx for
Composite $0 350,000 650,000 950,000
ONTAP
D2 D3*20%*$0.25*12
SSD storage $0 $210,000 $390,000 $570,000
months
D3 D3*80%*$0.04*12
Capacity pool storage $0 $147,168 $273,312 $399,456
months
D4 D3*20%*$0.05*12
Backup storage $0 $210,000 $390,000 $570,000
months
Dt
Licensing costs D4+D5+D6 $0 $567,168 $1,053,312 $1,539,456

Risk adjustment ↑5%

Dtr
Licensing costs (risk-adjusted) $0 $595,526 $1,105,978 $1,616,429

Three-year total: $3,317,933 Three-year present value: $2,669,866

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 18

Financial Summary

CONSOLIDATED THREE-YEAR RISK-ADJUSTED METRICS

Cash Flow Chart (Risk-Adjusted)

The financial results calculated in the

Total costs Total benefits Cumulative net benefits
Benefits and Costs sections can be
used to determine the ROI, NPV, and
$2.5 M payback period for the composite
Cash
flows

organization’s investment. Forrester

$2.0 M assumes a yearly discount rate of 10%
for this analysis.
$1.5 M

$1.0 M

$0.5 M
These risk-adjusted ROI,
NPV, and payback period
values are determined by
applying risk-adjustment
-$0.5 M factors to the unadjusted
results in each Benefit and
-$1.0 M Cost section.

-$1.5 M

-$2.0 M
Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

Cash Flow Analysis (Risk-Adjusted Estimates)

Present
Initial Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Total
Value
Total costs $0 ($595,526) ($1,105,978) ($1,616,429) ($3,317,933) ($2,669,866)

Total benefits $0 $1,487,841 $1,576,432 $2,181,438 $5,245,710 $4,294,364

Net benefits $0 $892,314 $470,454 $565,009 $1,927,777 $1,624,498

ROI 61%

Payback <6 months

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 19

Appendix A: Total Economic
Impact
PRESENT VALUE (PV)
Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed
by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s The present or current value of
technology decision-making processes and assists (discounted) cost and benefit estimates
vendors in communicating the value proposition of given at an interest rate (the discount
their products and services to clients. The TEI rate). The PV of costs and benefits feed
methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, into the total NPV of cash flows.
and realize the tangible value of IT initiatives to both
senior management and other key business
stakeholders. NET PRESENT VALUE (NPV)

TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT APPROACH The present or current value of

Benefits represent the value delivered to the (discounted) future net cash flows given
business by the product. The TEI methodology an interest rate (the discount rate). A
places equal weight on the measure of benefits and positive project NPV normally indicates
the measure of costs, allowing for a full examination that the investment should be made
of the effect of the technology on the entire unless other projects have higher NPVs.
organization.

Costs consider all expenses necessary to deliver the RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)
proposed value, or benefits, of the product. The cost
category within TEI captures incremental costs over A project’s expected return in
the existing environment for ongoing costs percentage terms. ROI is calculated by
associated with the solution. dividing net benefits (benefits less costs)
by costs.
Flexibility represents the strategic value that can be
obtained for some future additional investment
building on top of the initial investment already made. DISCOUNT RATE
Having the ability to capture that benefit has a PV
that can be estimated. The interest rate used in cash flow
analysis to take into account the
Risks measure the uncertainty of benefit and cost time value of money. Organizations
estimates given: 1) the likelihood that estimates will typically use discount rates between
meet original projections and 2) the likelihood that 8% and 16%.
estimates will be tracked over time. TEI risk factors
are based on “triangular distribution.”
PAYBACK PERIOD
The initial investment column contains costs incurred at “time
The breakeven point for an investment.
0” or at the beginning of Year 1 that are not discounted. All
other cash flows are discounted using the discount rate at the This is the point in time at which net
end of the year. PV calculations are calculated for each total benefits (benefits minus costs) equal
cost and benefit estimate. NPV calculations in the summary initial investment or cost.
tables are the sum of the initial investment and the
discounted cash flows in each year. Sums and present value
calculations of the Total Benefits, Total Costs, and Cash Flow
tables may not exactly add up, as some rounding may occur.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 20

Appendix B: Endnotes

1 Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s
technology decision-making processes and assists vendors in communicating the value proposition of their
products and services to clients. The TEI methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the
tangible value of IT initiatives to both senior management and other key business stakeholders.

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 21

THE TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT™ OF AMAZON FSX FOR NETAPP ONTAP 22