Evaluate and document current customer environment (e.g., equipment, operating systems, software, staff usage, satisfaction, need for change and growth, application and virtualization)
Differentiate storage product features and architectural advantages relevant to customer environment and plans. Contrast with current customer environment and competitive offerings at a level consistent with the customer audience. These features include:
Current storage solution portfolio and commonly occurring previous versions, related software and middleware
Storage products and storage management options
Performance improvements
Systems management
Reliability, Availability, Serviceability (RAS)
Storage Efficiency and Data Protection
Migration and tuning
C/DR requirements
Scalability and options for growth
Demonstrate understanding of key concepts and terminology (IBM, competitive, and industry)
Demonstrate ability to gather technical requirements to complete a TCO analysis
Identify opportunities (examples such as, but not limited to, data warehousing, deduplication, data compression, Storage Cloud, business resilience, virtualization, consolidation and workload optimized systems)
Identify areas of potential risk associated with installation and migration, discuss with customer, Business Partner involved with the sale, and the IBM team
Create a mutually developed implementation and/or migration plan with the customer, including remote support considerations, and identification of skills required for resourcing the project
Explain and gain agreement on post installation support responsibilities
Describe and perform pre-install Technical and Delivery Assessment using the SAPR process