NonStop Activities at Discover2012
My last post focused on recapping the Discover2012 event from a NonStop perspective and included links to where you can review keynote and track session videos. If you didn’t already register/attend the event, you need to do a post-event online registration in order to access the content. Since there was so much good stuff to share I wanted to separate the demos, sessions, and specific to NonStop media clips into another blog so they wouldn’t get lost within the event overview.
NonStop Demos, Sessions and Hands-On Labs
I spend most of my time at Discover on the show floor, interacting with many of our partners and customers. Based on feedback from last year’s event, this year the partner pavilion and demo stations were co-located with the NonStop stations. The partner booths and kiosks were right next to us with several tables and chairs for conversations to take place right in between. This really helped give us more of a community feel, and the partners seemed excited about what was going on with NonStop as well and seemed quite busy with traffic and the buzz around all things NonStop. It was mentioned to me several times that they were happy with the customer turnout, booth traffic and interaction with HP execs. I noticed strong customer participation around the event and as usual they filled and actively participated in the sessions, certification programs and hands on labs. We offered 30 sessions specific to NonStop and even with overlapping session times, most were well attended. Overall, participants seemed happy and to be getting what they hoped for out of the show.
In the Expo area we had an updated version of the wildly popular NonStop Persistent Cloud demo that utilizes recent customer examples in the banking industry and gives a great overview of ways NonStop can create, support or utilize Cloud environments. We also brought current demonstrations and presentations around Modernization, Database and Security. Around Operations and Manageability, customers are starting to seem better versed with HP standard manageability applications. Vinay Gupta’s technical session on the IT Performance Suite was full as customers had lots of questions about it along with SIM and other Essentials products that run on NonStop.
At the end of the demo station kiosks we had an HP NonStop 54000c BladeSystem running with newly introduced Solid State Drives (SSDs). This eye catching demo visually illustrated how an SSD could perform under seven different I/O scenarios, and it’s no surprise that this is where our biggest crowds gathered. In some cases we could achieve a 50% performance improvement using SSDs over HDDs. Why does this matter? Because customers don’t wait and are one click away from using your competitor if you are not ready when they are. With systems being measured in millisecond response times, we want to eliminate as much latency as possible while still retaining 100% application availability. Good enough availability does not cut it anymore and infrastructure is not about the cost, it’s about the value it can generate, or the loss it can produce should it fail. And that’s where NonStop fits in.
A snapshot view of the NonStop demo stations across from the NonStop Partners
just prior to opening the show floor.
Blogging Zone
The HP Blogging Zone at Discover2012 offered an endless array of content flowing thru in the form of coffee talks, video interviews and in depth technical Q&A with many of HPs leaders and technical gurus.
- Ric Lewis, VP and GM NonStop Enterprise Division, HP and Randy Meyer, Director of NonStop Product Management had a 20 minute interview with a group of industry bloggers that seemed very interested in knowing more about NonStop technology and are starting to discuss it in their circles.
- Kirk Bresniker, CTO for the BCS group also held a 30 minute coffee talk in the Blogging zone and the focus of many of the questions (from non NonStop writers) were around utilizing NonStop technologies and how they could help drive and support up and coming industry trends. He also participated in one of the Cube interviews HP Discover 2012 - Kirk Bresniker. Kirk was also taped in a session with Rory McInerney, VP of Intel’s Architecture Group and Server CPU Division discussing the future of Mission-Critical computing and how HP and Intel are currently working together to address evolving requirements. This talk examined how HP's Project Odyssey strategy will redefine the future of mission-critical and how Intel's Xeon and Itanium processors will play key roles. HP and Intel Delivering on the Future of Mission-Critical Computing.
- One of the interesting social media programs around the event included a group of HP sponsored Industry Bloggers. They were brought thru a series of demonstrations across the ESSN product set to encourage cross communication and obtain a wider reach and exposure for some areas and help break them out of some of the silos of communication. It was great to see industry writers discovering the NonStop platform for the first time as our Chief Technology Officer is describing just what it can do.
- If you’re interested in what others were thinking about the event I recommend you take a look at Richard Buckle’s Discover2012 reviews on Linkedin.
Stay connected with post-event activities by visiting the Discover Social Media Space on HP Connections and Sign-up for email updates via the conference website.
I like to Move it Move it
I’ve been to many of our conferences over the years and would say the primary evening activities were fun, entertaining and great opportunities to connect with each other. It is always a highlight to bump into partners, consultants and colleagues that I’ve worked with over the years, while this time I met many people for the first time that I’ve only spoken to over the last few years on teleconferences, email or virtual rooms and it was great to finally connect in person.
Getting to hear stories from Jeffrey Katzenberg about the early days with DreamWorks, his previous encounters with lions and their ongoing partnership with and HP was very interesting and later on Tuesday evening he gave us a pre release viewing of the new Madagascar 3 movie. After gaining some insight into all of the work that goes into making these movies, and just how important their partnership with HP is to their success, it was amazing to see it all come to life on screen!
The Connect Community party on Wednesday evening at Gilley’s was fun as we enjoyed seeing people that had NO business riding the bull take their chances. We even discovered some new talent and great singing voices amongst us that might just be the next American Idol.
The final evening concert was also very entertaining and personable to the HP crowd with great sounding performances by Sheryl Crow and then Don Henley. Henley’s comments about intellectual property seemed to hit home with our crowd.
Be sure to keep an eye out for my next post with details on this year’s NonStop Availability Award and AllianceOne Partner of the Year winners!
