Thursday, 31 January 2013
Powering the Cloud 2013 - ‘The Dawn of New Ages’
This is my first year as content director for Powering the Cloud and I am proud and slightly daunted to be taking over this role from Paul Trowbridge, who has led the event for many years. Paul will still be involved with Powering the Cloud but has passed over the mantle to me of steering the content.
Despite over 40 years in the IT industry I am still learning every day and welcome this new challenge. I also welcome your feedback and ideas as it will help me ensure that the content for the event is stimulating and relevant to you and your company.
Powering the Cloud 2013 is set against an economic backdrop of austerity but in Information Technology terms a period of rebirth, rebuilding and new opportunities. With this in mind I would like to open your thinking to embrace the idea of this period as ‘The Dawn of New Ages’.
While companies across Europe have been addressing challenging market conditions IT solutions have come to the fore as a tool for them to recreate their ‘go to market’ strategies, simplify and automate business processes and most importantly develop more agile, mobile, leaner and responsive organisations.
The role of Information Technology is no longer just as a support operation for the business. IT is now at the heart of how every organisation operates and is the catalyst for change and innovation.
Though tough economic times have made many organisations rethink their use of IT the real driving forces causing companies to embrace new IT technologies are far subtler and revolve around the new ‘Ages of the Customer, the Cloud and the Platform’.
The first of these ‘the Age of the Customer’ is completely changing business thinking and altering the way organisations view their internal and external customers and the way they should communicate, motivate and build relationships.
Technology over the last few years has changed forever the expectation of the customer. They now feel they should be able to buy or consume a service at the touch of a button. They expect technology to be intuitive and easy to use. They also want to access their company applications, local government services, entertainment, favourite applications and web sites on any device and from any location.
Most importantly they feel empowered to comment on their likes and dislikes and influence the quality, price and service of what they purchase. This extension of social networking into the heart of the marketing cycle is making organisations completely rethink their sales models and strategies.
Behind much of this change in user attitude is the influence of ‘the Cloud’ which has changed the traditional delivery mechanism of most industries, changed the economic models of organisations and removed the barrier for entry for new competitors with more agile and dynamic ways to address customer requirements.
‘The Cloud’ is a phenomenon that cannot be ignored and most importantly must be embraced.
The third major trend, which has been termed ‘The Age of the Platform’ by Phil Simon in his book of the same title, shows how Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google appear to have created a new business model that challenges traditional thinking and is making other major multinational organisations completely re-evaluate their go-to-market strategies.
By using new technologies and a deep understanding of how to build relationships with today’s customers these organisations have been able grow at phenomenal rates whilst ignoring traditional well established organisational models.
Powering the Cloud 2013 will address ‘the Dawn of New Ages’ phenomena by looking at the underlying technologies, solutions and thinking that is enabling organisations to meet the requirements of this new age with vigour and enthusiasm.
To this end we will build on the success of last year’s Spotlight sessions and enhance the format to combine ‘Thought Leadership’ presentations, technology insights, market leading case studies and perceptive panel sessions addressing the reality of implementing technologically advanced solutions.
There will be five main themes to these Spotlight sessions:
‘Business Outcomes - driving Big Data & Analytics’, ‘Securing your data’, ‘Enabling new & old world enterprise scale applications’, ‘All about the management’ and ‘Rethinking your datacenter architecture’.
Over the next few months I will explore all these five themes in this Blog to set the scene for this year and stimulate ideas and debate which will hopefully make the event in October more rewarding for everyone.
Powering the Cloud 2013 is your opportunity to explore what is possible in this new IT world, debate with your peers the issues you all face, listen to people and organisations who are successfully adopting change and most importantly absorb and embrace the opportunities this all represents to you and your organisation.
So I look forward to hearing your comments on this Blog and would also like to point out that we are now entering the period where we call for papers from those persons and organisations who feel they have a contribution to make to the event through thought leadership presentations and real life case studies. If you are interested in contributing then details can be found at http://poweringthecloud.com/speaker/information.
Look forward to meeting you in October.
John Chapman.
Monday, 22 October 2012
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 30th and 31st 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 30th 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 30th 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 31st
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 31st 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 30th 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 31st
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 31st
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 30th 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 31st 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.
Thursday, 13 September 2012
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.
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.
Thursday, 28 June 2012
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.
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.
Friday, 3 February 2012
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:
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
Friday, 14 October 2011
Crazy time!!
Four weeks out from the conferences is what I have come to refer to as the 'crazy time' - it is the period when speakers and sponsors wake up to the fact that their session is looming fast and that they have deadlines to meet (set by we heartless conference organisers).
While each individual looks at their one (or in some cases two or three) pieces we have to look at around some 130 conference sessions crammed into two days and if all our speakers wanted to make changes up to the last minute we would never produce a coherent online agenda let alone meet our print deadlines for the conference guide and other materials......
Rant over.
The agenda is - I believe - pretty much complete - aside form awaiting inputs from two sponsors for their sessions (no names no pack drill) - take a look and see for yourself at http://poweringthecloud.com/full-agenda.
As it is late on a Friday I am keeping this blog short and sharp and will simply add here the choice of SNIA presentations (tutorials) available to you this year.
Speak soon.
While each individual looks at their one (or in some cases two or three) pieces we have to look at around some 130 conference sessions crammed into two days and if all our speakers wanted to make changes up to the last minute we would never produce a coherent online agenda let alone meet our print deadlines for the conference guide and other materials......
Rant over.
The agenda is - I believe - pretty much complete - aside form awaiting inputs from two sponsors for their sessions (no names no pack drill) - take a look and see for yourself at http://poweringthecloud.com/full-agenda.
As it is late on a Friday I am keeping this blog short and sharp and will simply add here the choice of SNIA presentations (tutorials) available to you this year.
| - Interoperable Cloud Storage with the CDMI Standard |
| - Deploying Public, Private & Hybrid Storage Clouds |
| - Enterprise Architecture and the Cloud |
| - The Business Case for the Cloud |
| - Cloud Storage Security |
| - Virtualization - Who, What Why, When? |
| - The Effective use of Virtualization |
| - Storage Optimization for Virtual Desktops |
| - Innovative Application Recovery |
| - Storage Considerations for Virtual Servers |
| - Introduction to Data Protection: Backup to Tape, Disk and Beyond |
| - Advanced Deduplication Concepts |
| - PCIe SSD Storage Solution |
| - The File Systems Evolution |
| - Storage Performance Management |
| - Benefits of Solid State in Enterprise Storage Systems |
| - pnFS & NFSv4.2: A File system for Grid, Virtualization & Database |
| - What are the storage security best practices that will help you with compliance with regulations like PCI-DSS and the EU Privacy Directive? |
| - Data Center Evolution and Network Convergence |
| - Fibre Channel Driving Storage Innovation, Speed and Convergence |
| - Solving the I/O Bottlenecks in NextGen Data Centers & Cloud Computing |
| - Five Ways to Lower Datacenter Carbon Footprint |
| - The Confusion Arising from Converged Multi Hop Topologies etc |
| - The Role of WAN Optimisation in Cloud Infrastructures |
Speak soon.
Thursday, 29 September 2011
Time to take your pick
It has been a long summer this year - not in terms of the weather here in the UK that's for sure - but certainly in respect of getting all of our speakers' and sponsors' inputs into the agendas of the three conference programs. It seems that the psychology of having the events just one week later this year - 2nd and 3rd November rather than the last week in October - has made many folks think that there is an extra month to get things done!
Rant over for this blog, so let's get down to the serious side of things - what can you expect to choose from on the agenda this year?
Once again we have plenty of choice across the tracks - our keynote theatre will feature sessions from our platinum sponsors plus The451Group and a couple of guests such as Cisco and VMware. The 'Powering the Cloud' track looks at many aspects of the cloud computing model including security and legal aspects. Virtualization World goes from server to storage to desktop, on to I/O and all points in between and the Storage Technologies track covers dedupe, backup, archiving, pNFS, files systems, SSDs and more. Finally the Datacenter Technologies and Networking track examines all the latest FC and IP trends and developments as well as energy efficiency and integrated IT management.
Alongside the technology tracks we have our usual mix of customer/user-led presentations in both English and German languages and the theatres on the expo show-floor where there will be more vendor/supplier specific presentations on their latest products and solutions.
The online agenda - we think - has been improved this year to allow you to navigate it more easily and start to build your own personal plan for your visit - we've also tried to categorise the sessions so that we can suggest the sessions that are of more interest to you based on the information you have entered into your profile. Let us know if you think this has worked or if you have suggestions to improve it next year via the online feedback tab on the website.
Finally for this edition I've added the abstracts from the presentations of our conference partners and other independent speakers - there are many more on the web site so please take a look and start to plan your visit.
See you soon
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Rant over for this blog, so let's get down to the serious side of things - what can you expect to choose from on the agenda this year?
Once again we have plenty of choice across the tracks - our keynote theatre will feature sessions from our platinum sponsors plus The451Group and a couple of guests such as Cisco and VMware. The 'Powering the Cloud' track looks at many aspects of the cloud computing model including security and legal aspects. Virtualization World goes from server to storage to desktop, on to I/O and all points in between and the Storage Technologies track covers dedupe, backup, archiving, pNFS, files systems, SSDs and more. Finally the Datacenter Technologies and Networking track examines all the latest FC and IP trends and developments as well as energy efficiency and integrated IT management.
Alongside the technology tracks we have our usual mix of customer/user-led presentations in both English and German languages and the theatres on the expo show-floor where there will be more vendor/supplier specific presentations on their latest products and solutions.
The online agenda - we think - has been improved this year to allow you to navigate it more easily and start to build your own personal plan for your visit - we've also tried to categorise the sessions so that we can suggest the sessions that are of more interest to you based on the information you have entered into your profile. Let us know if you think this has worked or if you have suggestions to improve it next year via the online feedback tab on the website.
Finally for this edition I've added the abstracts from the presentations of our conference partners and other independent speakers - there are many more on the web site so please take a look and start to plan your visit.
See you soon
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G2000 Data Center Evolution:” How Organizational Structure, Technology Roadmaps and the Vendor Landscape are being changed by the Cloud, Virtualization & Converged Infrastructure. Presented by Ken Male, Founder, TheInfoPro.
TheInfoPro's founder, Ken Male, will present findings from thousands of one-on-one interviews with IT decision makers from Global 2000 companies and lay out how the IT Infrastructure is evolving toward the use of hybrid cloud architectures. The findings will span TheInfoPro’s research of the Storage, Servers, Networking, Information Security, & Cloud Computing markets and will detail the timing of implementation and competitive landscape for areas such as Internal & External Cloud, Converged Infrastructure, Unified Computing, Server & Storage Virtualization, Tiered Storage and Automated Provisioning. The session will detail the performance (ratings, spending, vulnerability) of the key technology providers for IT Infrastructure including: EMC, NetApp, Cisco, IBM, HP, Symantec, Brocade, VMware, Riverbed, Juniper, Red Hat, Microsoft and more.
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I/O Virtualization – The Next Virtualization Frontier. Presented by Dennis Martin, President, Demartek
Do you use the full bandwidth in all of your server adapters, network interface cards, RAID controllers all the time? Or do you only need peak bandwidth for these adapters some of the time? Would you like to make a rack full of servers use only the storage and network adapters that they actually need, rather than having to put expensive cards in every server? I/O virtualization is emerging as a great way to virtualize your underused adapters across your server infrastructure. In this session, we will define I/O virtualization and how it complements server virtualization. We will discuss extending the PCI-Express bus natively and within other transports such as Ethernet and InfiniBand, and new standards such as SR-IOV and MR-IOV. We will also discuss how I/O Virtualization compares to technologies such as Fibre Channel NPIV, DCB and FCoE. As is customary, Dennis will discuss results of his early lab testing with these technologies.
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Emerged and future storage technologies – the next decade. Presented by Josh Krischer, Josh Krischer & Associates
Emerged and future storage technologies – the next decade (45 min.), Storage is the most important item in the data centre. Storage hardware and software development pace is the fastest among all high-tech technologies. Cloud services and cloud storage are in cloud offer opportunity to reduce CapEx and OpEx) replacing conventional storage methods usage to a utility-type service model. This presentation covers all the trends in storage and points to technologies which are recommend watching, answering end-users’ curiosity on:
• What are the challenges of the storage users, how application will influence storage requirements?
• What will be the most-critical storage strategies and technologies for storage infrastructures till 2020?
• What are the major emerging techniques for storage subsystems and connectivity?
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Storage in a Virtual World. Presented by Randy Kerns, Evaluator Group
Implementing a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environment or server virtualization have serious implications for the storage systems used. The requirements for storage are affected and the storage systems need to be evaluated based on a different set of considerations. This session will explain the implications of virtualized environments on storage and what attributes of a storage system are important to meet the virtualized environment requirements.
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Cloud Computing is the future – for sure – but secure! Presented by Bernd Becker, Chairman of EuroCloud Deutschland_eco e.V. and Vice President EuroCloud Europe
No business without trust: This is also valid for Cloud Services. EuroCloud is focussing to develop customers confidence in cloud services, both, from a legal and compliance perspective as from the data protection perspective on a European wide basis. Our EuroCloud Star Audit Certification scheme covers all relevant aspects to identify trustful providers. Cloud customers are able to find orientation when selecting cloud services for their operation.
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Beyond the CRC - How energy legislation will affect the Data Centre. Presented by Andrew Jones, Alquist Consulting Ltd
The new UK Government have made drastic changes to the UK’s CRC Energy Efficiency legislation. Originally all revenue raised was returned as incentives to the participants. The government is now keeping all the money leaving business with an extra tax burden of £1 Billion. Coincidentally a shortage of UK electricity generation capacity whilst demand is increasing will combine to increase electricity costs further. The taxation and increased prices will force all Data Centres to monitor and reduce their energy consumption. The presentation will look at the current energy legislation, show the ‘Energy Generation Gap’ that will occur in 2015 and show techniques that can be used to monitor and reduce energy consumption in the data centre.
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Supporting virtual desktops: the back-end infrastructure. Presented by John Abbott, Founder & Chief Analyst, The 451 Group
As larger virtual desktop infrastructure installations come into production, the challenges of building a scalable, robust and affordable back-end infrastructure to support them become more evident. But recent developments in the storage and converged systems sector have seen greater levels of support and integration with VDI environments. What are the options today, and what are the pros and cons of the various approaches?
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Unified Storage Networking. Presented by Dennis Martin, President, Demartek
With all the recent discussion about unified storage networking, is it really possible to converge LAN and SAN infrastructures? Why would you want to do this? Does Windows support this? What are the ramifications for the infrastructures you already have in place such as Ethernet, Fibre Channel and iSCSI? What does it look like to run Ethernet, iSCSI and Fibre Channel together at 10Gbit/sec? Are you planning a new data center? This session will cover existing technologies that are available now including the key protocols and standards such as Data Center Bridging (DCB), also known as Enhanced Ethernet, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) that will make the unified data center work, the advantages and disadvantages of having an integrated network, and how currently installed storage networks will be affected. DCB and FCoE will be compared to iSCSI. Considerations for future cabling infrastructure will also be discussed. In addition, Dennis will include some of the results from his unified network testing with DCB, FCoE and iSCSI in the Demartek lab.
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Data-intensive Storage Services on Clouds: Limitations, Challenges and Enablers. Presented by Michael Jaeger, Vision Cloud
The emergence of cloud offerings has made feasible the delivery of computational services that provide access to virtualized resources. However, current approaches do not tackle key issues related to cloud storage, which are of importance given the enormous amount of data being produced in today’s digital environment (e.g. by smart phones, sensors, or user generated content). The EU-funded VISION Cloud project is developing a storage cloud infrastructure to meet these issues. VISION Cloud addresses the challenges of data-intensive storage services through raising the abstraction level of storage, enabling data mobility across providers, allowing content-centric access, providing secure computation close to storage, and deploying new data-oriented mechanisms for QoS and security guarantees.
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