The Power of Proof

Case Studies: The Power of Proof

Technology vendors from around the world -- established vendors and start-ups -- leverage the expertise and credibility of The Tolly Group to provide the all-important proof of product claims. This proof is not limited to "speeds and feeds" but can encompass any element of the product that can be quantified in the lab.

Ease-of-Use
TCO/ROI
Features & Functions
Performance
Product Architecture
Interoperability
Research+Testing

#1. SMB Network Storage Ease-of-Use

Challenge:

A major provider of networking storage products was introducing a market-leading network storage solution providing unprecedented ease-of-setup and wanted to support its marketing efforts with proof of its claims.

Tolly Certified Solution:

Tolly certified that the high-availability network storage system could be set up and made an operational part of a Microsoft domain in under 90 minutes.

During the same test, Tolly also validated: failover/recovery, throughput and scalability, OS support and iSCSI/block-level file operations.

#2. SMB/Enterprise Virtualization Backup/Recovery

Challenge:

A major provider of backup/recovery solutions was introducing a flexible, ease-to-use system to run in complex, VMware environments and wanted to support its marketing efforts with proof of its claims.

Tolly Certified Solution:

Tolly validated that the solution could easily be installed on a LAN or SAN and as a physical or virtual appliance.

In addition, Tolly verified that the solution leveraged VMware's "Hot Add" architecture as well as implemented techniques to optimize backup/recovery and deduplication operations.

#1. Enterprise Wireless LAN - Total Cost of Ownership

Challenge:

A leading-edge wireless LAN equipment provider leverages high-density antenna configurations to reduce CapEx and OpEx and wanted to support its marketing efforts with proof of its claims.

Tolly Certified Solution:

Tolly conducted an exhaustive study of various Enterprise-class deployment scenarios. Tolly examined not only equipment costs but cabling infrastructure, service and energy costs projected over a 5-year period.

The Tolly Certified TCO study provided very granular details to support the vendor's claims CapEx/OpEx benefits.

#2. IP Address Management Solution - TCO/Return on Investment

Challenge:

A leading provider of IP address management (IPAM) solutions found themselves competing with "free" IPAM DNS/DHCP offered by an OS vendor. They required proof of their claim that their "for free" solution was a better investment than the alternative "free" solution.

Tolly Certified Solution:

Tolly built environments using each solution and extrapolated the effort/cost including management and labor of managing from 2,000 to over 100,000 IP addresses. The Tolly Certified report showed savings on labor of over $500,000 over three years when managing large IP address spaces.

During the same test, Tolly also validated the reliability and scalability of the vendor's IPAM appliances.

#1. Endpoint Security - Breadth of Management Functionality, Tools & Policy Coverage

Challenge:

A leading-edge endpoint security vendor recognized that many endpoint security products required extensive configuration and were difficult to manage. In response to this need, this vendor developed a solution that would provide ready-to-use templates to provide more extensive coverage and required proof of these claims for its marketing efforts.

Tolly Certified Solution:

Tolly built an endpoint security environment using this vendor's product along with some five others and made a detailed evaluation of functionality that included evaluating 'out-of-the-box' coverage, integrated with Microsoft Active Directory, policy control and whitelist options and much more.

The Tolly Certified report was distributed globally and localized to: Chinese, German Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese and Latin-American Spanish.

#1. LAN Switch Performance

Challenge:

A market-leading provider of LAN switch products, introduced a new meshed stacking technology. To support the marketing of this product, the vendor required proof of its performance vs. competitors.

Tolly Certified Solution:

Tolly ran standard RFC 2889 performance (throughput and latency) tests in configurations of 48 and 144 Gigabit Ethernet ports and 8 10GbE ports of sponsor and competitors switches.

As part of the same test, Tolly evaluated microburst tolerance and power consumption. The report included a section on 3-year TCO based on CapEx, licensing and power/cooling costs of all the switches in the test.

#1. LAN Switch Distributed Core Fabric Architecture

Challenge:

A leading provider of data-center LAN switch solutions developed a dramatically different alternative to traditional chassis-based core switches - a distributed core switch fabric - and wanted independent proof of its claims.

Tolly Certified Solution:

Tolly benchmarked a system of 4 'spine' and 6 'leaf' nodes using 40Gbps interconnects to confirm wire-speed throughput for 384 user-facing 10GbE ports. Additionaly, Tolly confirmed the resilience and automatic failover of the distributed core fabric.

This report was distributed globally and localized into: German, Chinese, Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Korean. Additionally, Tolly produced a podcast highlighting the architectural features and benefits.

#1. LAN Switch Interoperability

Challenge:

A leading provider of data-center LAN switch solutions introduced a new data-center rack switch and required independent validation of its ability to interoperate with existing data-center switches.

Tolly Certified Solution:

Tolly certified interoperability in keys areas included: VLAN, 10GbE PHY, jumbo frarmes, Link Aggregation, RSTP/PVRST+, MSTP and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)/Data Center Bridging (FIP, ETS, PFC & DCBX).

As part of the same project, Tolly benchmarked the performance (latency and throughput) versus the competing switch.

The Tolly report was distributed globally and localized into Chinese.

#1. Application Switch - Research+Testing

Challenge:

A leading provider of high-end application switches introduced a new model and required proof-of-capabilities versus leading competitors - however, the solutions from competing vendors were too expensive to acquire for the purpose of testing.

Tolly Certified Solution:

Tolly certified the performance of the sponsor's application switch running an extensive suite of tests based on Tolly's Common Test Plan #1077 Application Switch Performance. Tolly researched the performance claims of the competing vendors, giving the competitors the benefit of the doubt that their unverified numbers were accurate, and calculated the cost-per-Gigabit-per-second of throughput and the cost-per-transaction of each of the competing systems.

#2. High-End Data Center LAN Switch - Research+Testing

Challenge:

A leading provider of high-end data center switches introduced a new model supporting over 1,000 Gigabit Ethernet ports and required proof-of-capabilities versus leading competitors - however, the solutions from competing vendors were too expensive to acquire for the purpose of testing.

Tolly Certified Solution:

Tolly certified the performance of the sponsor's LAN switch running over 1,000 ports and benchmarked the device power consumption according to Tolly's Common Test Plan #1080 Switch Power Consumption. Tolly researched the performance and power consumption claims of the competing vendors, giving the competitors the benefit of the doubt that their unverified numbers were accurate, and calculated the cost-per-Gigabit-per-second of throughput and power consumption of the competing systems.