Jerry Bartlett, CIO of TD Ameritrade Holding Corp., in Omaha, said that while his company tries to be vendor agnostic with technology to better drive competitive bidding, his is an almost exclusive EMC shop. "That's a bit problematic because it limits your choices. That is one of the inhibitors to flexibilty. The day you can move to a more heterogeneous environment, then you can introduce true competitiveness, as opposed to a threat that I'm going to move from this vendor to this vendor."

When asked how vendors are doing in terms of creating interoperable products to allow heterogeneous environments, the IT execs awards grades of Cs or Ds.

"I'm very, very critical," said Inches, who gave vendors a D. "Almost all the vendors are bunched up into the [Storage Networking Industry Association] organization, but they're not delivering yet."

Bartlett, who gave vendors a C-minus, said he is more optimistic about the future for device interoperability because some "well-known" vendors will come out with products that require a response from competitors.

Thomas gave the vendors an E for effort.