Hello and welcome to my 2011 blog coming from behind the scenes as we prepare for the 8th edition of SNW EUROPE and the 3rd editions of VIRTUALIZATION WORLD and DATACENTER TECHNOLOGIES, this year being marketed together under our exciting new theme ‘ Powering the Cloud’.
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that our dates have slipped a week this year from the usual last week in October to the first week in November – it’s a long story as to why but we’ll be ‘back to normal’ in 2012. It was a tough decision to map our events around the public holidays on 1st November and having the right facilities for the 2,000 attendees and 70 sponsors but being in Congress Frankfurt on the 2nd and 3rd November makes it best for all concerned we hope.
Our sponsor line-up is once again looking very strong – already confirmed returning Platinum partners are Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Oracle and we are delighted to welcome DataCore to the highest level of partnership. At Gold level we are pleased to welcome back Compellent, Hitachi Data Systems, Juniper and Quantum and we have a wide variety of Silver sponsors including new faces Avere, Bocada, EUROstor, Flexient, Methode, NETGEAR, SHD, Silver Peak, Veeam and Viking Modular Solutions who we welcome to our events for the first time.
We’ll take a closer look at all the sponsors next time but in the meantime I will be a bit lazy and share with you our latest press release.
Blog with you again soon!
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FRANKFURT POWERS THE CLOUD IN NOVEMBER
WITH SNW EUROPE, VIRTUALIZATION WORLD AND DATACENTER TECHNOLOGIES
London, 15 June 2011 -- Following their resounding success in 2010, SNIA Europe and Angel Business Communications today announced the return of their triumvirate of conferences under the new theme “Powering the Cloud”. SNW Europe, Datacenter Technologies and Virtualization World will be held at Congress Frankfurt on 2nd and 3rd November 2011 and will once again offer a wide range of educational content reflecting the latest trends and developments in the industry as well as a comprehensive expo floor featuring the leading IT vendors operating in key markets including data security, storage and protection, desktop, server, storage and network virtualisation, and data centre architectures and technologies. Now in its third year, the “three in one” event promises to be bigger and better than ever.
“Cloud computing is the new wave of IT architecture impacting almost every size and type of organisation today and is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualisation, service-oriented architectures and utility computing,” said Paul Trowbridge, marketing director for the three events. “We believe there is no better place to gain an understanding of how to take advantage of this exciting new area and meet with so many high-calibre companies whose technologies are innovating data centres worldwide.”
To improve the visitor experience and enable delegates to maximise their participation, the organisers have launched a new website (www.poweringthecloud.com) that offers a wide range of interactive, content-rich features. These will include the possibility to match individual interests with the sponsors’ offerings in order to find the most appropriate solution and prioritise and plan personal schedules accordingly.
The organisers have also announced a new partnership with leading analyst firm The 451 Group, who will be contributing to all three conference agendas. Storage research director Simon Robinson stated “The emergence of virtualisation and cloud-based IT-as-a-Service models offer many tremendous benefits. CIOs and IT managers know this, but what they need is help to get there. In particular, our research shows that modernising the storage infrastructure is an essential part of this journey. We are delighted to be part of the SNW Europe programme this year, and look forward to sharing our perspectives on how IT and storage stakeholders can embrace this next-generation model with confidence.”
Already confirmed for the conference keynote program is John Manville, Cisco VP of IT Network and Data Center Services, who will be presenting ”Data Center Transformation – Cisco’s Virtualisation and Cloud Journey” which will look at Cisco’s IT strategy for strengthening its competitive advantage by demonstrating the value of the “Network as the Platform.”
The comprehensive conference programme will also include case studies and a vast array of SNIA tutorials covering server, storage, network and application virtualisation, cloud-based architectures, data deduplication, data security, tiered storage, FCoE and solid state storage. The three events are aimed at a broad spectrum of end user IT professionals involved in data management, data storage, business continuity, server provisioning and application delivery and support, as well as IT resellers, consultants and distributors focusing on these technologies.
The organisers are again pleased to welcome BITKOM, the voice of the information technology, telecommunications, and new media industry in Germany as a conference partner for the fifth consecutive year. Also returning to the event in 2011 will be Demartek, an independent testing house who focuses on real-world, hands-on industry analysis and lab validation testing of server, network, storage and security technologies, for the small and medium business (SMB) environment and large enterprises. Other organisations participating in the wide and varied agenda will be The Data Centre Alliance, a professional association of leaders from across the data centre industry focused on promoting best practices and innovative technologies, and The Green Grid.
In addition to the vendors who return to the conference year after year, the organisers expect to welcome many new sponsors in 2011 and are confident of matching last year’s record of over 70 sponsoring vendors.
“We’ve had great success with SNW Europe. This is one of the premier storage events in Europe to reach customers and partners, and we’ve been very happy with the ROI we’ve seen from our participation. For 2010 alone we are estimating a 50-fold return on our investment. It is definitely a worthwhile sponsorship opportunity for HP and one that reinforces our leadership position in the storage industry”, said Shannah Thompson, EMEA Marketing Manager, Storage, HP Europe, Middle East & Africa.
“Most enterprise organisations are not benefiting from the cost efficiency of virtualised and private cloud environments for business-critical applications such as SAP, Oracle and Exchange. The organisers have done a great job of bundling all the relevant topics within one event. We are looking forward to demonstrating to a wide audience how proactive monitoring of the SAN is critical for setting SLAs and successful, risk free, data centre growth,” said Chris James, Marketing Director EMEA at Virtual Instruments.
SNW Europe, together with Datacenter Technologies and Virtualization World, set new records in 2010 with over 1,750 unique visitors from over 20 countries, an increase of 15% on the 2009 figures. Over 70% of the attendees were end-users, resellers, systems integrators or members of the international press, blogger and analyst community.
