The Final Countdown

Hi and welcome to my last post prior to the opening of the three ‘Powering the Cloud’ conferences next week in Frankfurt . Strangely this week sees something of a ‘lull’ in proceedings as most of the work on the agenda is done and now it is just confirming speakers arrangements and getting our hands on the final versions of their materials so we can get everything pre-loaded over the weekend and on Monday so that we minimise al the last-minute changes that speakers today always seem to want to do - famous last words!

As part of my last blog I would like to talk a little bit more about our agenda this year where we have adopted a new format for part of our proceedings based on feedback received over the past two years for a more focussed examination of the top issues on the agenda of IT professionals like yourself.  We are calling these our ‘Spotlight sessions’ and there are nine of these running throughout the course of the conference program on the 30^th and 31^st October.  Each Spotlight session runs for a full half-day (morning sessions from 09:30 to 13:00) / afternoon sessions from 14:00 to 17:30) and is opened and chaired by a leading independent analyst/commentator from Europe or north America. Each topic features a number of short 20-minute presentations from a selection of our event sponsors, a 30-minute presentation from SNIA Europe and is wrapped up with a 30-minute panel discussion where you can get your questions answered or share your own views.  We are encouraging you to take in a full half-day session to get a broad view of the topic and participate in the discussions - you can chose from the following nine sessions over the two days.

Tuesday 30^th October: 09:30 - 13:00

·        Big Data & Analytics -Introduced & chaired by Matthew Aslett, Research Manager, Data Management & Analytics, 451 Research and featuring presentations from Amplidata, Oracle, Cloud Circle, LSI and the SNIA

·        Next Generation Data Protection - Introduced & chaired by George Crump, President and Founder of Storage Switzerland and featuring presentations from Quantum, Spectra Logic, Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Oracle and SNIA

·        Data Center Networking -  Introduced & chaired by Benjamin Woo, MD, Neuralytix and featuring presentations from Intel, Emulex, Brocade, Xsigo, Dell and the FCIA        

Tuesday 30^th October: 14:00 - 17:30

·        The Infrastructure Impact of Virtualization - Introduced & chaired by Leah Schoeb, Senior Partner, Evaluator Group and featuring presentations from DataCore Software, VMware, Riverbed, SolarWinds and SNIA

·        Disaster Recovery Techniques: How to protect your data - Introduced & chaired by Josh Krischer, Founder & Principal Analyst, Krischer & Associates and featuring presentations from citeq, Hitachi Data Systems, Nimble Storage and SNIA

·        Cloud Storage and Storage as a Service - Introduced & chaired by Simon Robinson, Research Vice President – Storage, 451 Research and featuring presentations from Scality, Actifio, Seagate, Synology and SNIA

Wednesday 31^st October: 09:30 - 13:00

·        Solid State Storage and its Impact on the IT Environment - Introduced & chaired by Randy Kerns, Senior Strategist,  Evaluator Group and featuring presentations from X-IO, Avere Systems, STEC, Viking Technology and SNIA

·        The Big Squeeze – the new wave of systems convergence - Introduced & chaired by John Abbott, Founder & Chief Analyst, 451 Research and featuring presentations from NetApp, Methode, Virtual Instruments, Dell and SNIA

·        Securing the Cloud - Introduced & chaired by Bernd Becker, Chairman of EuroCloud Deutschland_eco e.V. and Vice President EuroCloud Europe and featuring presentations from Microsoft, Trend Micro, SafeNet and SNIA

Please note that in the Spotlight sessions there are no breaks in between presentations so if you do not wish to attend for the full half-day you may miss the beginning or end of a particular presentation.  The other four or five parallel tracks do have 5 or 10-minutes gaps between presentations to give you time to move between rooms.  As usual at our events we will be doing our best to make sure the presentations (and presenters) keep to time to allow you to make the most of your time with us.

What else should you watch out for?

We have a full program of Keynote Presentations from our key sponsors all of who will have senior executive speakers sharing their latest views of the market and the way forward as they currently see it plus a sp[ecial closing keynote on the afternoon of the 31^st from Microsoft.

As always you will find a full-day track dedicated to your peers presenting case-studies and sharing their experiences  in deploying cloud, virtualization and storage solutions from a variety of suppliers.  The majority of these are from the German market and will be presenting in local language (denoted by the ‘(D)’ on the agenda) so please make sure you check the language that the presenter will be using if you wish to attend any of these sessions.

We have some interesting panel discussions on the afternoon of the 30^th October in the Keynote Theatre chaired by George Crump of Storage Switzerland and our new partners ExecEvent.  The first is entitled ‘Hot Technologies in Data Storage’ and the second ‘Tape Technology and Trends’, while on the 31^st October at 11:20 we have a great debate lined up entitled ‘Object Storage for Big Data’. This session will be chaired by Robin Harri,s aka ‘StorageMojo,’ and will feature speakers from Amplidata, Aspera, Intel and Quantum. Expect some lively debate among the participants in all these panel debates and the audience, so if you have any burning issues or questions you need answering then get along and get them answered.

On the morning of Wednesday 31^st October in the Show-floor theatre you can meet members of the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) for an hour-long set of presentations entitled ‘Industry leading vendors talk about latest Data Center advancements’. Along with the FCIA there will be presentations from member companies Amphenol, Emulex, NetApp and QLogic.

We are pleased to welcome our regular partners SANBoard and Guide Share Europe (GSE) who are hosting an 80-minute workshop on Tuesday 30^th October at 14:00 on ‘Performance Management von Storage Area Networks’ plus BITKOM, who once again are hosting their ‘Anwenderforum’ as an integral part of the program.  Taking place in the conference room Spektrum 1 on Wednesday 31^st October the full title this year is BITKOM-Anwenderforum IT-Infrastruktur. 'IT Appliances – Konzepte und Anwendungen' (please note that all these sessions will also be hosted in German language).

So I hope you can find something here and in the full agenda (check it out online at http://poweringthecloud.com/full-agenda ) or download a set of PDF versions at http://poweringthecloud.com/visitor/agenda).

Safe travel to Frankfurt and we look forward to seeing you there.

Agenda in detail and farewell to friends

As usual at the start of September our agenda finally starts to take shape as our sponsors and speakers return from vacation and get back up to speed in their professional environments. It can be a little frustrating at times having to chase these companies who are spending money in sponsoring the events for their inputs but with this being a very busy time of year in terms of the number of key events out there we can understand to some degree :-)

The good news is that the agenda is almost complete and you can view the online version at this address: http://poweringthecloud.com/full-agenda.

We continue to welcome new sponsors to the event and the support of those that have been with us for many years.

New faces in the expo area this year will include Actifio, InkTank, Kaspersky Lab (GOLD), LG, Nexenta, OCZ, Progress DataDirect, Rosenberger OSO, SafeNet, Seagate, SMART Storage, Solar Winds, Synology, Whiptail, Xsigo.

We are most indebted to our top-level Platinum and Gold sponsors: DataCore, Fujitsu, Dell, Oracle, and VMware plus Brocade, Emulex, Hitachi Data Systems, Kaspersky Lab, NetApp and Quantum who’s contribution ensures the viability of the conferences and the services we are able to offer our delegates.

Sad farewells:

I regret to say that we have lost two staunch supporters of the events in the last few weeks.

Claus Egge, formerly of IDC Europe and most recently with Rainmaker Files has passed away in London. Only last year Claus presented one of our keynote sessions on behalf of sponsors DataCore and he was a regular visitor and contributor to the events in Frankfurt over the years.

We were also saddened to hear that Howard Goldstein of training specialists HGA in the USA also left us suddenly. Howard had first participated at SNW Europe in 2012 and was returning this year with an increased involvement. He has been a strong supporter of SNIA and its education programs over the years delivering high-quality training sessions at the Tech Centre in Colorado.

Both Claus and Howard will be greatly missed and all of us on the organising team send our condolences to their families and friends.

Agenda starts to take shape

I have the first news of the 2012 agenda format for our collocated conferences SNW Europe, Datacenter Technologies and Virtualization World running under the theme ‘Powering the Cloud’ for a second year on the 30th and 31st October 2012.

We are excited to be working with a number of leading analyst houses and independent commentators giving the 2012 program a new look with a series of half-day mini-tracks addressing the key issues and topics affecting most organisations’ IT strategies and needs.

Each of these mini-tracks will focus on a particular subject and be hosted by an analyst representative and feature a mix of vendor, end-user and where relevant SNIA and/or other association content. Each mini-track will close with an open Q&A session for the audience and speakers to exchange views and get questions answered.

Already confirmed are the following analyst sessions:

1 - Big Data and Analytics chaired by Matthew Aslett, Research Manager, Data Management & Analytics, The 451 Group

2 - Cloud Storage and SaaS chaired by Simon Robinson, Research Vice President – Storage, The 451 Group

3 - Converged Infrastructures chaired by John Abbott, Founder & Chief Analyst, The 451 Group

4 - Disaster Recovery Techniques chaired by Josh Krischer, Founder & Principal Analyst, Krischer Associates

5 - Solid State Storage and its Impact of the IT Environments chaired by Randy Kerns, Senior Strategist, Evaluator Group

6 - The impact of Virtualization (VDI & server) on Storage Infrastructure chaired by Leah Schoeb, Senior Partner, Evaluator Group


In addition there will be tracks addressing Next Generation Data Protection, Data Security, and Datacentre Networking – the analysts for these sessions will be announced shortly.

The list of confirmed sponsors for the events continues to grow and includes
Platinum: DataCore
Gold: Brocade, Emulex, Kaspersky, Hitachi Data Systems, Quantum
Silver+: Avere, F5, Fast LTA, Intel, QLogic, LSI, Methode, Riverbed, Rosenberger OSI, Scality, Solarwinds, Veeam, Viking, Virtual Instruments, Xsigo
Silver: Novastor, QNAP, PoINT, qSkils, SmartOptics, Texas Memory Systems

Blog soon.

2012 Call-for-papers

Hi and welcome to my first blog of 2012 and the announcement of our 'call-for-papers' for this year's editions of our well established and successful conferences- SNW Europe, Virtualization World and Datacenter Technologies - being held this year on the 30th and 31st October at Congress Frankfurt.

Our call for papers is aimed primarily at independent speakers from pprivate and/or public organisations reliant on IT to support their activities or speakers from independent analyst/consultant organisations involved in the specification and provision of advice on IT products and services.

Representatives of IT hardware/software/service vendors are welcome to submit papers, but only those that can be guaranteed to be wholly educational and informative for conference delegates - and not a veiled corporate/product presentation - will be considered. Vendors can of course secure guaranteed presentation slots through event sponsorships.

Under the overall umbrella theme of 'Powering the Cloud' we will be focusing on several key areas of IT infrastructure, including the following:

· Cloud Security

· BIG DATA

· Desktop/client Virtualisation

· Converged Infrastructures

· Net Generation Data Protection

· Solid State Storage

· Public/Private Cloud storage solutions

· Outsourcing, Hosting and co-location

· The delivery of managed services

· Data centre networking

So if you would like to share your experiences with a broad European audience and/or put across your point of view on a key industry trend or standard then please submit your ideas at http://poweringthecloud.com/call-for-papers today.