In December 2007, Edison Group, under the sponsorship of HP, published a TCO White Paper: EMC, NetApp and HP Midrange Storage Arrays. Based upon extensive hands-on testing by Edison analysts, the paper demonstrates that storage administrator efficiencies can positively affect ownership costs for SAN arrays in the midmarket.

HP wanted to see if actual customers and channel partners could replicate the results of Edison's TCO study. With the release of a new entry level array (the HP StorageWorks EVA4400) Edison agreed that this would be an excellent opportunity to compare the new machine and a competing system from EMC - the CLARiiON CX3-10. Management complexity is a more critical factor for entry-level systems than for higher-end systems, so being able to demonstrate these advantages to actual, customers would confirm the Edison TCO study results. Therefore Edison and HP created The EVA4400 Challenge.