DCIG Slashes IT Product Selection Risks and Time with First Interactive Buyer’s Guide

April 2, 2012 - PRLog -- Online Resource Provides On-Demand Competitive Comparisons Between Storage Products

AUSTIN, TX – April 2, 2012, DCIG, the first industry analyst firm to engage the world with transparency of business and social tools, today unveiled the Interactive Buyer’s Guide (IBG) (http://www.dcig.com/ibg), providing the industry’s first research-as-a-service for instant product insight. The on-demand service allows for line-by-line product breakdowns, enabling IT professionals to reduce the time spent identifying, collecting, sorting, filtering and rating business-to-business storage software and hardware products for consideration.

Tweet This: DCIG Launches First Interactive Buyer’s Guide for Buyers and Providers of IT Storage Products – (http://www.dcig.com/ibg).

IT professionals today spend weeks or months collecting quantitative data about competitive products being considered to support IT requirements and solve business challenges. The volume of products and the process of review undertaken to analyze and determine the best selection limits an organization’s ability to focus on important operational activities. Additionally, manual approaches to product analysis typically suffer because data becomes aged by several months before the actual selection process begins. With the introduction of the DCIG Interactive Buyer’s Guide, the process of vetting and selecting the optimal solution can be completed in minutes, providing objective, normalized and visually impactful analysis.

The IBG research-as-a-service (http://www.dcig.com/raas) delivered by DCIG performs apples-to-apples comparisons of competitive products along with analyst rankings for an unbiased review of the best available products based on site requirements. The Interactive Buyer’s Guide is updated regularly to provide timely purchasing, competitive and sales research presented in an easy-to-use impactful format. Additionally, an innovative social networking feature allows users within the same company to safely share comments about products they are evaluating, competing with or purchased within an interface that contains regularly updated comparisons.

Features of the DCIG Interactive Buyer’s Guide include:
•   Buyer and Seller Assessment (http://ibg.dcig.com/assessment) – DCIG’s unique data visualization interface allows anyone with basic computer skills to view, sort, filter, compare and print DCIG branded market data, returning weeks or months of staff time that would be spent researching new products.
•   Multi-tenant social networking (http://ibg.dcig.com/social) – The IBG features include a built-in commenting system so that users working at the same company can leave comments about the product for their colleagues.
•   Build-a-Brief™ (http://ibg.dcig.com/brief) - Printable branded product comparisons highlighting shortlisted product comparisons for use in procurement, competitive evaluation and sales engagements
•   Online Survey System (http://www.dcig.com/survey) – Web-based terminal designed to collect and present information in a normalized and visually usable format.
•   Authoritative Third-Party Validation - Objective ranking and analysis needed to support the vendor/product selection process.

Many challenges confront IT managers with respect to hardware and software selection. Chief among them is the time required to identify, sort and rank the best products for the intended IT environment. DCIG’s Interactive Buyer’s Guide greatly reduces the resources required to conduct a thorough product review. The apples-to-apples comparison of all surveyed products as well as an independent analyst rating of each product from an end user’s view point is invaluable for buyers involved in product acquisitions, speeding time to deployment and limiting risk.

“People do not want information gatekeepers,” said Robert Woolery, Vice President, Product Management and Marketing, Condusiv Technologies. The DCIG Interactive Buyer’s Guide removes the barriers to comparative product insight, providing a collaborative presentation that features an innovative social networking interface with very useful filtering and decision enhancing data. This is what the web and social media have been about and DCIG nails it with their interactive portal of comprehensive product analysis.”

“Using the IBG, organizations for the first time have fingertip access to a compelling resource that delivers real world information in a format that is easily understood and actionable,” said Jerome Wendt, Lead Analyst and Founder, DCIG. “Now available, the IBG levels the playing field with vendors by putting users in the driver seat of research preparation using DCIG’s view, filter and print research-as a-service model.”

Pricing and Availability
The DCIG Interactive Buyer’s Guide is available immediately, providing data on midrange arrays,
small enterprise storage arrays and early case assessment software. Upcoming Buyer’s Guides include Purpose Built Backup Appliances, Enterprise Cloud Storage and eDiscovery Review Software. Pricing starts at only $5,000 per seat for end-users, IT resellers and technology vendors.

Resources:
•   Blog: DCIG delivers research-as-a-service:
(http://www.dcig.com/2012/04/dcig-interactive-buyers-guide-ibg-delivers-raas.html)
•   Download the DCIG Interactive Buyer’s Guide data sheet (http://ibg.dcig.com/datasheet)
•   View the DCIG  corporate video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNNrQ50YydY)



About DCIG
DCIG analyzes software, hardware and services companies within the enterprise data storage and electronically stored information (ESI) industries and provides informed, insightful third party analysis and commentary. As industry experts, DCIG independently develops and licenses access to DCIG Buyer's Guides and the Interactive Buyer’s Guide to C-level executives, IT managers, systems and storage engineers and architects, storage vendors and cloud service providers. DCIG Buyer's Guides provide comprehensive, in-depth analysis and recommendations of products available for purchase in the various enterprise data storage and ESI spaces. To learn more, contact DCIG at 402-884-9594, sales@dcig.com or visit www.dcig.com.