Initial perspectives on HP Discover

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By Jay Livens, Product Manager, Americas

Being a relatively new employee to HP, I never ceased to be amazed by corporate events.  When I first started at HP about six months ago, I immediately headed to the America’s Sales Kick Off which was a huge spectacle unto itself with thousands of people.  However, the SKO was a different because it incorporated a only subset of HP’s products and services.  Now, I am attending Discover and the scope of the event and audience is massive.  It is hard to fathom 10,000 people at one event.  Of equal interest to the audience numbers is the scope of the content.

One of the things that originally drew me to HP was the diversity of products the company offers.  While I focus on enterprise backup hardware, HP has a large market share in related markets including servers, networking, storage and tape hardware.  Yet, it also a maintains strong presence in many other complementary sectors including software, handhelds, services and many others.  HP Discover is an amazing event because it combines all of these different subject areas into one overarching event.  There are hundreds of sessions covering topics across all spectrum of products and I find the shear choice overwhelming.  However, it is a refreshing change from working for a relatively small company that only sells one product.  I love that HP can help companies address pains across all business segments and markets.  It is truly a win-win for the customer.

Another surprise about HP Discover was session popularity.  As a last minute attendee, I was late registering for individual sessions.  My first session choices focuses on storage and data protection because that is most directly relates to my product line.  Unfortunately, many of these sessions were fully booked which suggests that many others are equally interested.  This scenario is a testament to the registration activity and excitement around the event.  I can tell you that the excitement is palpable and will only increase as HP makes a number of major announcements.

I am excited to be here and hope that our readers can join us virtually.  You can follow the social media buzz by clicking here.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Jay has his own blog at www.aboutrestore.com/ where he talks about backup, recover, and the storage industry.