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Competitive Profiles

Full Analysis Interface

Quick Start Guide

An illustrated introductory guide to using Competitive Profiles

Competitive Profiles Portal

September, 2016Full Analysis Quick Start Guide

What’s New alerts you to the most recent enhancements to Competitive Profiles research content and analysis tools. An RSS feed option is also provided.

On your initial entry to Competitive Profiles, you will be presented with the Competitive Profiles portal page. Note that as this page is customized to your specific license entitlements, the view of options on this page as shown below may vary in your specific instance.

This page provides two options to start using Competitive Profiles:

QuickCompete – provides key tools and product information in an easy-to-use alternate interface designed to meet the needs of sales and sales support staff who do not need all the capabilities of the Full Analysis interface. See the separate Quick Start Guide for QuickCompete for more details.

Full Analysis Interface – click on the desired module to open that module’s home page. From there you have access to all available interface features with the full database of products and all analysis tools.

Information on the license you are using, including the remaining subscription period.

CP module home page


A country selectionoption preselects the pricing currency. This is repeated on relevant pages and can be changed at any time

Tabs provide single click, easy access to other licensed modules

Search and Advanced Search provide quick access to information by entering a product or part name or number.

The main menu provides access to products, analysis tools and support.

What’s New provides information on the latest features or content enhancements. An RSS feed option is also provided.

What’s Hot highlights the most recent changes to the database. New products are highlighted by the “new” symbol.

Find Products provides quick access to manufacturers, product families and products.

Tools one click access to popular and powerful analysis tools

On-line User Guide

Getting Started provides help for new users

My Recent Products provides access to recently viewed products

My Documents provides quick access to your stored content

My Resources handy links to help and support resources

My Alerts Subscribe to customised pricing and product alert emails

Personalize Competitive Profiles

September, 2016 Full Analysis Quick Start Guide

Competitive Profiles maintains a user profile for each individual subscriber. This enables you to store your individual “documents” such as saved comparisons, and also enables you to customize aspects of Competitive Profiles to your own preferences.

This user customization is managed through the My Profiles menu function. There are three customization features available to you.

Default Country setting allows you to determine which country is pre-selected in the drop down country selector when you access a CP module. This setting is personal and does impact other users’ preferences or override the default country selected for the license.

Multi-country Preferences is driven from the available pricing currencies enabled on the license. Here you can select which of these multiple currencies you wish to have personally pre-selected in tools such has Global Pricer. Currencies you don’t select here are still available as optional selections and remain visible in the tools.

Help, Support and Feedback


Whether you are subscribing to one module or all modules, you have access to help and support services to assist in receiving the maximum benefit from Competitive Profiles.

Help functions are located on the main menu, and are accessible from every page in Competitive Profiles.

User Guide opens the online user guide, which also provides context sensitive help for functions throughout Competitive Profiles.

Contact Us opens an online Support Form, allowing users to contact the relevant teams in order to provide support for access problems, “how to” questions and queries relating to the research content. Users can also provide feedback, suggestions for enhancements or changes to the interface or tools as well as requests for considering extended research coverage.

The Getting Started Panel on the module home page provides help for changing the country view as well as links to this guide, support and feedback contact details

Additional visible help information is provided on the analysis tools pages and on key pages throughout Competitive Profiles. This form of help supplements the context sensitive User Guide by providing a quick summary of selection options.

Note that this ‘on-page’ help display can be collapsed and expanded as desired to optimize screen display space. Here the same help box is shown in both modes. The expand/collapse option is a personal setting, and doesn’t affect other users.

Collapse/expand icon.

Solution Builder features its own Quick Start Guide, located on the Solution Builder main page

The Help icon on every page in Competitive Profiles provides direct access to context sensitive help.

The home page provides a link to download this Quick Start Guide.

Searching for a product


To search for a product, enter your search term in the search box on the module home page

The search results page will list products that match your search criteria, sorted by product type.

If you aren’t satisfied with the initial search results, you can use the Advanced Search tool to expand or refine your results.

Search for Product searches for matching terms in product names (default)

Search for Partsearches for matching terms in part numbers or SKUs

Search all CP modules expands your search to all licensed modules (e.g. CPStorage)

Search archivesexpands your search to include archived products that are no longer sold

Search in description textexpands your search to include product or part descriptions

Product Profile


The Product Profile is the central access point for product information in a Competitive Profiles. This page highlights key product information at a glance, with a menu providing access to additional information and analysis tools.

For a product included in Competitive Landscape analysis, typical competing products are highlighted, with the option to create side by side comparisons or access the Competitive Landscape tool for a detailed configuration level comparison.

Highlights of this page are:

The Product Profile menu provides access to additional information specific to the featured product and key analysis tools.

Export the product profile data to PDF

Gartner written product description, also accessible in side product menu

Navigation options to retrace steps or go to associated pages

* Major products include a Competitive Landscape. This analysis tool provides priced configuration level analysis, based on selectable matching criteria. Not all products however are included in Competitive Landscape.

Summary specifications with link to full specifications

Typical competing products highlighted* with the option to select products to compare

Link to access Competitive Landscape*, providing configuration based pricing analysis.

Add to/Replace Comparison enable adding the selected products to your Current Comparison or creating a new Comparison

Product Profile menu


The Product Profile page provides a side bar menu with links to product level information, analysis tools and navigation options.

Home – return link to the CP module home page

Manufacturer – displays all products tracked for the manufacturer of the product featured in the current profile. Includes summary specifications.

Product Family – a page listing the products and their summary specifications for the product family that the featured product belongs to.

Full Description – displays the full description for the featured product, as written by IDEAS researchers.

Specifications – displays the full specifications sheet as tracked for the featured product

Lifecycle - Product lifecycle information tracks historical transitions from one model to the next

Software – for storage products, lists key software options commonly available for the hardware product being researched.

Quick Pricer – displays part level pricing, including the option to view price history for a part as well as model discounted parts pricing. The currency displayed is determined by the country selection of the page.

Discounting – this link is displayed in country views where IDEAS tracks discounting data. Provides summary level discounting information as well as optional Advanced Discounting (License dependant).

Configurations – displays IDEAS built typical configurations for this product. If typical configurations are not available for the featured product, this link opens Solution Builder to create a configuration.

Global Pricer – is similar to Quick Pricer, but with the ability to select the display of multiple country pricing. The available country pricing is dependent on license entitlements.

Services – provides information on standard warranty, with links to additional services pricing from CPService*.

Performance – displays published benchmark results for the featured product tracked in the Competitive Profiles database.

External Links- links to additional information external to Competitive Profiles, such as the manufacturer’s press release and web site information.

Product Watch – provides quick access to reports of parts and price changes for this product.

Compete Wizard – is an alternate approach to finding competing products. Accessed from here, it inherits knowledge of the featured product, and uses a series of user selection steps to create comparisons.

Add to Compare – adds the featured product to your current comparison.

* This function requires a CPService license.

Tools menu


Each Competitive Profiles module features a Tools menu. The Tools menu is a standard item on the main menu bar, and hence available on all pages. It can also be found on the module home page.

Some Tools are common between modules, while others are module specific and only appear for that module.

Quick Compete – takes you to the Quick Compete wizard

Product Selector – provides access to all products in the database from a select list filtered by product type.

Compete Wizard – provides a multi-step process to build a comparison based on criteria you select

Competitive Landscape – an important analysis tool, provides comparisons based on configuration pricing.

Benchmark Wizard – provides access to a vast database of published benchmarks, such as those from TPC, SAP, Oracle, SPEC. Provides sort, filter, charting and export options.

Market Landscape – provides an easy way to view which products are marketed into different market segments

Current Comparison – whenever you create a side by side comparison, Competitive Profiles retains that comparison, even if you close your browser session. This option takes you directly to that comparison.

Solution Builder – is a powerful tool to create or customize multiple product configurations, create complex solutions involving mixed products such as server, storage and database, and analyze resultant pricing.

Product Watch – provides on-line reports of changes to parts and pricing for a list of products you choose to monitor.

Client & Prospect Report – a PDF generated report featuring custom comparisons of selected product configurations as well as Gartner Competitive Landscape comparisons for the selected products.

Publications – a tool to allow you to share your saved comparisons and projects with others.

Discount Landscape – an on-line report of discounting information for a manufacturer you select.

Advanced Pricer – allows you to search for parts across a manufacturer or product family. For example you can search for all disk drives in a particular family.

Find obsolete products – provides options to search the database for information on obsolete products.

Product Selector


Product Selector, accessed from the Tools menu, provides an alternative to the Product menu to locate a product or select products to compare.

Product selection lists can be filtered by product type to assist selection. An individual product can be selected to go to its profile, or multiple products selected to create a comparison.

Select a specific product and click Profile to go to the product’s profile page

Select multiple products and click Add to comparison or Replace Comparison to create a side by side comparison.

TIP! You can select multiple products as shown by dragging the mouse over them. Or hold down the Control key (Ctrl) to select multiple products from different areas of the list, such as in creating a competitive comparison.

Compete Wizard


Compete Wizard is designed to assist you to create a comparison based on criteria you select. By following a series of selection steps, you refine the product choices to a final short list. You can then create a comparison of all the products in the final list or select specific products to compare.

Compete Wizard selection options are specific to the CP module being used.

Compete Wizard is accessed from the Tools menu, or from a Product Profile. When accessed from a Product Profile, the selections from step 1 are inherited from the featured product, and you are taken direct step 2

In Step 3, select products to compare from those in the matching products list presented.

A side by side product comparison is created. You can save and share this comparison

Competitive Landscape


Competitive Landscape is a key analysis tool available in both CPServers and CPStorage. Competitive Landscape has two main functions:

1. To identify typical competing products for a specific target product.

2. To provide competitive analysis based on configuration level pricing and product capability.

Competitive Landscape is accessed either from within a Product Profile, where it is preloaded with the featured product and its competitors, or from the Tools menu, where you start by selecting the manufacturer and the product to base your comparison on.

Typical competing products are pre-selected by IDEAS analysts. You can also add custom product selections to the competing products list.

1. Select the configuration level you wish to base the comparison on

Check All & Uncheck All and the individual check box for each product allows you to select products to include in further analysis.

Analyse creates a pricing comparison at configuration level

Add to/Replace Comparison will add the selected products to your Current Comparison or create a new Comparison.

Configure loads the selected product configurations into Solution Builder, allowing customisation and analysis of the configurations.

Create a Cost of Ownership comparison with just one click*


Selections in 1. & 2. will refresh the page to update the competitive configuration selections.

2. In CPServers, choose whether you want to find competitors by matching on performance, number of processor chips or cores.

Competitive Landscape Analysis


After clicking the Competitive Landscape Analyze button, you will have a comparison based on priced product configurations. Additional options include price history analysis and discounting modelling.

Create a cost of ownership comparison*.

Configuration price history analysis, with charting options for price components and price type.


Load these configurations into Solution Builder.

View configuration price history analysis

Return to Competitive Landscape selection.

Alter the preset discounts for configurations in this comparison. Changes don’t alter the preset values.

Export the data to a spreadsheet

The scalability chart provides information on the scaling of the compared products (green bars) and the position in the scaling range of the compared configurations.

Scaling is by relative performance or processor chips or cores in CPServers, and by capacity in CPStorage.

Benchmark Wizard


The Benchmark Wizard provides access to the Competitive Profiles database of benchmark results. You can customise the display with a range of sort options and export the data for further analysis.

Both CPServers and CPStorage include this tool to access to the Competitive Profiles benchmarks database relevant to the products they track. Select a specific benchmark type to view results.

Options are provided to export the selected benchmark data to a spreadsheet or chart the top 10 results

Select the benchmark of interest, and Summary or Detail view.

Control the display with options for the number of results per page, and scroll options to move between results pages

Further control display by multi-level ascending or descending sort options

Links to further information on the benchmark itself

Market Landscape


Market Landscape was derived from a simple concept used by IDEAS analysts to track products by market segment. This simple, yet useful tool was later incorporated into Competitive Profiles to provide that same utility to subscribers.

Export the data to a spreadsheet

Select the type of products you wish to review. Product Type selections will vary according to the module you are using.

Market Criteria (CPServers) provides market segment choices, such as platform (operating system), processor architecture and form factor.

Click OK to generate a new report from changed selections.

Comparisons


A fundamental feature of Competitive Profiles is the ability to create side by side comparisons. Options are provided to automate the creation of comparisons, to create comparisons using user defined selections, or to simply add products to an existing comparison.

Comparisons offer view options, as well as options to save and recall comparisons, or export the comparison to a spreadsheet.

Saved comparisons can only be loaded or deleted by you. You can use Publications to share a saved comparison with others. Competitive Profiles also retains your last created comparison (Current Comparison), even after you close your browser session.

View selects the display type from Summary, Detail or Performance options.

Load and Delete enable you to open or delete saved comparisons.

Add and Removeenable adding another product or remove an existing product from the comparison.

Action provides options to Clear or Export the current comparison.

Save the comparison by entering a name and clicking the Save button.

A Comparison can be created from a number of areas in Competitive Profiles, including Competitive Landscape, Compete Wizard, Product Family displays and Search results.

Export the comparison to a spreadsheet

Solution Builder


Solution Builder allows you to model the pricing and components of both simple and complex product solutions involving servers, storage, software and services. These solutions can be saved for later recall or shared with other users.

Solution Builder implements a hierarchy of Projects > Solutions > Configs > Parts.

When you enter Solution Builder for the first time, you will see the new project display. The project is empty of solutions at this stage.

A project is a container for solutions, so you now need to add a solution and then add one or more configurations to that solution. There are two options provided to add a solution:

Select Add a config from the Solution menu.

Using the Project menu, go to Action> Add a new solution

Click the add a solution link

You are now in the new solution page where you are prompted to add a configuration to your new solution.

You will also see a new menu item titled Solution. Click to open the Solution menu, and select Add a config.

This in turn opens a menu prompting you to select the Competitive Profiles module you want to create the configuration from and the desired manufacturer to select a product from.

Select the module and then manufacturer you want to create the configuration from.

Solution Builder (cont)


Select a product from the drop down menu

Lets assume you’ve selected CPServers and IBM in the previous step to add a configuration from.

You will now see a pop-up window allowing you to select a product, which in turn will present the option to either Build from a sample configuration or Build from a parts list. You also have the option to include Support.

Lets assume you’ve selected Build from parts list. Once you’ve selected the parts you want, click Add config to solution.

You now have a saved project, containing one solution which in turn contains one configuration. From here, you can use the Solution menu to add another configuration to the solution, or use the Project menu to

add another solution.

Your configuration is now created as Solution 1. You should rename it to something meaningful to you. You should now also name your project and save it.

Click to return to the main project page

ALERTS & Bulletins


Alerts & Bulletins are push e-mail services available to Competitive Profiles subscribers. Alerts are customisable emails sent to you whenever a product you are interest in changes in price. Part Alerts are sent to you when new parts are added or parts are made obsolete to your product of interest. New product Alerts are sent to you when a new product is announced. Bulletins are brief and timely analysis of major new product announcement events and major new benchmark results.

* Note: Not all services are available in all modules.

To set up price change alerts, choose ‘Alerts Management’ from the ‘My Profiles’ menu. Then choose the first company you wish to set up from the drop down menu.

For each product family, use the grid to select which products and in which currencies you are interested in. You can also set the minimum price change threshold. When you are happy with your selections click on the update button and then move on to the next company you are interested in.

Product Watch


1. Click to set up or update the list of products you wish to monitor

3. Click on a monitored product to produce the on-line report showing new parts, obsoleted parts and price changes.

2. Choose the period of time to report over.

Product Watch is an on-line reporting tool to monitor changes in parts and pricing for a product or group of products that you select.

The list of products monitored is saved and is individual to you, and can be updated at any time.

Change reports can be exported to a spreadsheet for further analysis.

Red ticks highlight changes

Publications


Open Publications from the Tools menu and then click create a new publication

Publications allows you to share your saved comparisons and projects (as shown in My Documents) with other Competitive Profiles users.

A Publication is like an electronic envelope in which to send selected documents to others. It works by sending access links (URLs) to your saved documents to other users by email.

To share a saved document with others, select Publications from the Tools menu and follow the three step wizard.

In Step 1, enter a title for your publication, and optionally add notes. The notes will be displayed when your recipient opens the document. You can also password protect the content.

In Step 2, select the document or documents you wish to share from the file tree. Click a document name to select it.

In Step 3, enter the email address or addresses for recipients, and add any notes. The notes will be displayed in the email body. Click Send Email when completed.

Find Obsolete Products


You can find obsolete products by using the search function

The Competitive Profiles interface normally works with currently marketed products. However, when a product is withdrawn from the market, the Competitive Profiles database coverage is not deleted, it merely has a status change to obsolete.

Find Obsolete Products allows you to search the database by product name or list products by selection criteria to find information on obsolete products.

Or list obsolete products by manufacturer, product type and the period over which you are interested

A list of products matching either your search criteria or selection criteria is returned. From here you can click on a product name to open that product profile, or select products to create a comparison.

Cost of Ownership


Select a configuration to compare.

Cost of Ownership analysis is available for CPServers, CPStorage, CPNetworks and CPService modules. This feature is accessed via the Tools menu and can also be initiated within the Competitive Landscape area within the relevant module.

Select the manufacturer and product from the drop down lists.

A three year cost of ownership analysis is returned, charting the outcomes, along with the full pricing disclosure.

A range of chart options is provided, including cost of ownership price history.

Competing products and configurations will appear.

Then select ‘Cost of Ownership’.

Service Pricing


CPService provides a wealth of data on support service pricing for major server and storage products.

CPService tracks services information by product. You can use the CPService Product menu to locate the service information you require by choosing the product or product group of interest. This is illustrated in the three step process below.

The service pricing is returned, showing manufacturer part number, pricing and service product summary information.

A list of the services for the selected product family is returned.

Click on the service product of interest to see the service pricing.

Service Features


CPService provides details of the deliverables for a service product, referred to as the features of a service. Features includes aspects such as hours of coverage and response time.

CPService provides a wizard function to assist in creating a services features comparisons.

Select Service Features via the Tools menu.

In Step 1, use the selection options to list matching service products.

In Step 2, select service products to compare, and click the desired comparison button below the table.

A comparison of service features for the selected products is produced.