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Like IT Data Centers Do You Take Trade Show Exhibit Infrastructure For Granted?

Do You Take Trade Show Exhibit Infrastructure For Granted?

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Think about this for a moment; do you assume that Information Technology (IT) and Cloud based data centers along with their associated Data Infrastructure supporting various applications will be accessible when needed. Likewise, when you go to a trade show, conference, symposium, user group or another conclave is it assumed that the trade show, exposition (expo), exhibits, booths, stands or demo areas will be ready, waiting and accessible?

IT industry cloud software defined events

Fire Disrupts Flash Memory Summit Conference Exhibits

This past week at the Flash Memory Summit (FMS) conference trade show event in Santa Clara California, what normally would be taken for granted (e.g. expo hall and exhibits) were disrupted. The disruption (more here and here) was caused by an early morning fire in one of the exhibitor’s booths (stand) in the expo hall (view some photos here via Toms Hardware.com).

Fortunately, nobody was hurt, at least physically, and damage (physically) appears to have been isolated.

However while the key notes, panels, and other presentations did take place as part of the show must go on, the popular exhibit expo hall did not. Granted for some people who only attend conferences or seminar events for the presentation content, lack of the exhibition hall simply meant no free giveaways.

On the other hand, for those who attend events like FMS mainly for the exhibition hall experience, the show did not go on, perhaps resulting in a trip in vain (e.g. how you might be able to recoup some travel costs in some scenarios) for some people. For example, those who were attending to meet with a particular vendor, see a product technology, conduct some business or other meetings, do an interview, video, podcast, take some photos, or simply get some free stuff were disrupted.

Likewise those behind the scenes, from conference organizers, event staff not to mention the vendor’s sponsors who put resources (time, money, people, and equipment) into an exhibit were disrupted. Vendors were still able to issue their press releases and conduct their presentations, keynotes, panel discussions, however what about the lack of the expo.

Do We Take Data and Event Infrastructures For Granted

This begs the question of if trade show exhibits still have value, or can an event function without one?

I am not sure as some events can and do stand on their merit with presentation content being the primary focus, others the expo is the draw, many are hybrid with a mix of both.

A question and point of this piece is that how many people take conferences in general, and exhibits along with their associated Infrastructure for granted?

How many know or understand the amount of time, money, people resources and various tradecraft skills across different disciplines go into event planning, staging, coordination, the execution, so they occur?

This also ties into the theme of how many people only think and assume that IT data centers and clouds along with their data Infrastructure resources, services are available supporting applications along with data access to give information?

The same holds true for your telephone (plain old telephone system [POTS] and cellular or mobile) service, gas, electric, sewer, water, waste (garbage), traditional or network based television, internet provider, highways, railroads, airports, the list goes on.

Where To Learn More

Learn more about related technology, trends, tools, techniques, and tips with the following links.

What This All Means

The good news is that nobody physically was injured this past week.

Granted some may have incurred emotional, monetary or public and marketing related injuries, however, those can be dealt with over time.

My point is, do we assume too much (perhaps rightfully so) that events, exhibits and other trade show conference related items are always on, always available, accessible open on time? With IT data center and clouds, you have different expectation levels of access, availability, durability, survivability for a given cost to meet service expectations.

Data center, cloud and data infrastructure SDC, SDDI, SDI, SDx

Next time you attend a webinar, seminar, conference, symposium, trade show, presentation, exhibit or expo, take a moment and look around at what you see, as well as what you do not see. Having been in involved in and around conferences, conventions, seminars, expos across different industries, both behind the scenes as well as on the public side, I do not take these events for granted.

Knowing what goes into the planning, coordination, scheduling, promotion, logistics, all the things behind the scenes, next time you go to an event, look around. What you can see that perhaps are not meant to be seen as part of their Infrastructure. In event venue exhibit halls as well as data centers, there are those things you see such as data infrastructure resources including racks of servers, storage, I/O networking, monitors, displays, work areas, heating ventilation air conditioning (HVAC) along with those you might not see.

What you might not see and take for granted are the smoke and fire detection along with suppression systems which at the Santa Clara convention center appeared to have done their job. There are also the electrical power and distribution systems; perhaps battery backed uninterruptible power systems (UPS) along with standby alternate generator power.

How about a big round of applause, thank you, Atta boy and Atta girl, acknowledgment and other signs of appreciation for all those involved behind the scenes who do the planning, preparation, coordination, setup, tear down and in person what you see at events.

Thank you to all who have, and continue to enable trade shows, conferences, seminars, exhibits, road shows among other events to take place, after all, the show must go on. In other words, like IT and cloud Data Centers, do you take trade show exhibit infrastructures for granted?

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Greg Schulz – Multi-year Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio.

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Technology buying, do you decide on G2 or GQ?

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

While at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco and walking around the expo floor, something familiar was taking place.

Sure, there were the vendors trying to outdo themselves with give away, magicians and other techniques to draw you into their booths or show areas.

What I also saw and heard were plenty of sales and marketing pitches that seemed more focus on selling and closing a demo, vs. selling the company or product, let alone trying to show a reason for wanting to learn more about the company.

Granted, for some people a good demo is all that is needed to become comfortable with the company or products.

On the other hand, it is nice to have a quick conversation to set up a follow-up to learn more and dig deeper.

What I find interesting is how many organizations are more focused on trying to close on the demo than to spend a minute or two in a quick conversation that could go a lot further. This can be a challenge when somebody asks me about a company or product and my impressions of it. For example, if a vendor is to focused on selling and closing on the GUI demo, when asked I sometimes after to say that company xyz has a great demo, beyond that not much else to recommend at this time. Now if the goal of the company is to sell the demo, then that is what they should be closing on.

On the other hand, if the goal of the company is to sell and close on products, then the demo is just one of many means to the goal as opposed to a singular focus.

Is it just the booth or show crews who are under instructions from the marketing or event staffs who are supposed to be focused? Nope, sales and marketing types, engineers or technical types and even CEOs. In fact, at VMworld I meet a few CEOs or other CxOs who were focused on either closing on their demos, or simply using the demo as an excuse to handoff and be able to go talk to somebody else. Funny thing is that some of those same CxO types complain directly or via their surrogates when they do not get the coverage they wanted or expected for their product, service or company.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Having spent more years than I care to remember at shows and conference events, both as a customer attendee, as a vendor exhibitor, and as an analyst, consult, lets keep in focus the value of time at events. This means realizing that shows or conferences typically mean speed dating or very short windows of opportunities to interact, for both the exhibitors and attendees.

Thus, make the best use of available time. If you are the attendee, tell the exhibitor what you are interested in or need to learn more about. Likewise if you are the exhibitor, do some basic triage and quickly determine what the attendee is looking for, whom they need to talk to, or follow-up with.

This prompts the question(s) of do you make product and services decisions based off G2 (intelligence, information, insight, awareness) or GQ (looks, packaging appeal, style, trendy and hip, how it demos or shows)?

Are you buying a product, service or technology based on likability, popularity, cost, peer pressure, or something else?

Do you buy because of the demo or of its functionality?

Do you buy because of cost or price, or business benefit?

Do you buy because of a vendor, partner or sales person, or because of it?

Do you place more emphasis on looks, appearance or GQ factor including packaging, presentation, images and style?

Alternatively, do you place emphasis on G2 including insight, intelligence, knowledge, comfort and understanding of solution?

As with many things, my assumption that the answer to the above questions is it depends.

Ok, nuff said for now.

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Plenty of Industry Firsts at VMworld Europe

Warning: Ok, I’m tiered and ready for a short vacation, so be advised, there is some industry and other tongue and check humor in this post, if you get it great, if not, don’t worry about it, ask around and someone can fill you in… ;).

So with VMworld Europe taking place in Cannes (that’s in the south of France and a nice place if you have not been there yet), rest assured, there will be a flurry of product, service and other announcements, some of which will use the usual industry first, industry only only, truly unique and the other usual claims. Unfortunately I wont be in Cannes as I will be in Florida next week doing a couple of keynote and sessions on IT optimization with some IT professionals in the Tampa and Miami areas.

What’s fun about being pre-briefed under NDA and/or embargo (are they the same) is hearing what the different vendors are or will be announcing and what can be even more fun, is hearing their claims of being 1st or thinking or believing they are 1st when in reality one may have just gotten off of the phone with someone else who is announcing something similar.

Rest assured, there will be some good and useful and with the right qualifiers, new, unique, 1st and so forth announcements next week especially for those who take the time to dig in to the details. So do that, look at the announcements, better yet, if you are at VMworld Europe, stop by and see the various vendors, their new solutions and ask the questions and dig into the details to learn more.

Now having said all of that, with the applicable qualifiers, I will say, that to my knowledge, from what I’m aware of based on briefings and other information that I can disclose, the industry first European appearance in the south of France in Cannes at a VMworld conference will see the first appearance and giveaway promotion by a vendor of my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) which will be taking place at the StorMagic booth (or stand) in the Innovators area of the expo hall. (did I get enough qualifiers in to make it an industry 1st? – That was some humor BTW ;) ).

I think in their category and for what they are doing (VM and storage infrastructure, data protection and management) the StorMagic SvSAN is rather interesting and deserves a closer look. While on the surface it looks like what others are doing, that is simply moving a storage software stack that might otherwise run in a tin wrapped software appliance (that’s a server or controller) vs. repackaging and stuffing into a silicon wrapped (e.g. software and memory enabled) virtual machine (VM) as many others have done. On closer inspection, SvSAN is actually enabling management of internal RAID adapter cards with integration into VMware control/management interfaces to simplify and streamline hardware, software and storage resources. (yes yes yes, I know, everybody else is already doing that – BTW – That was another attempt at some humor! ;) )

However don’t take my word, check it out yourself and let me know. Stop by the StorMagic both or stand, say hello, tell them that Greg from StorageIO sent you, signup for a giveaway of my new book, ask them to show you why they have something new and different with their new version of SvSAN VM and Storage Infrastructure management tool. You  then can be the judge as to how unique and enabling their new announced capabilities are for broad market VMware environments.

Disclosure, StorMagic is not nor have they ever been a client or sponsor directly or indirectly via 3rd or 4th parities. that is, unless you consider them buying some books from my publisher or one of my publishers distributors in some way shape or form an in-direct means. (Now for some, that was an industry inside joke, for others, well, lets leave it at that for now, nuff said ;) ).

Ok, time to get packed and head out for a long weekend and get ready for next weeks busy schedule. For those heading to VMworld, enjoy and hope to see or talk with you soon. For those in Tampa and Miami, hope to see you next week, for everyone else, check out my events page as there are many events coming to cities and venues near you soon. Enjoy and try to have some fun, and to quote Wolf Gang Puck, "Live Love and Eat" :) .

Cheers – gs

Technorati tags: StorMagic, Event, Tampa, France, Miami, VMworld, Wolfgang Puck, Cannes, The Green and Virtual Data Center

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On The Road Again: An Update

A while back, I posted about a busy upcoming spring schedule of activity and events, and then a few weeks ago, posted an update, so this can be considered the latest "On The Road Again" update. While the economy continues to be in rough condition and job reductions or layoffs continuing, or, reduction in hours or employees being asked to take time off without pay or to take sabbaticals, not to mention the race to get the economic stimulus bill passed, for many people, business and life goes on.

Airport parking lots have plenty of cars in them, airplanes while not always full, are not empty (granted there has been some fleet optimization aka aligning capacity to best suited tier of aircraft and other consolidation or capacity improvements). Many organizations cutting back on travel and entertainment (T&E) spending, either to watch the top and bottom line, avoid being perceived or seen on the news as having employees going on junkets when they may in fact being going to conferences, seminars, conventions or other educational and related events to boost skills and seek out ways to improve business productivity.

One of the reason that I have a busy travel schedule in addition to my normal analyst and consulting activities is that many events and seminars are being scheduled close to, or in the cities where IT professionals are located who might otherwise have T&E restrictions or other constraints from traveling to industry events, some of which are or will be impacted by recent economic and business conditions.

Last week I was invited to attend and speak at the FujiFilm Executive Seminar, no private jets were used or seen, travel was via scheduled air carriers (coach air-fare). FujiFilm has a nice program for those interested in or involved with tape whether for disk to tape backup, disk to disk to tape, long term archive, bulk storage and other scenarios involving the continued use and changing roles of tape as a green data storage medium for in-active or off-line data. Check out FujiFilm TapePower Center portal.

This past week I was in the big "D", that’s Dallas Texas to do another TechTarget Dinner event around the theme of BC/DR, Virtualization and IT optimization. The session was well attended by a diverse audience of IT professionals from around the DFW metroplex. Common themes included discussions about business and economic activity as well as the need to keep business and IT running even when budgets are being stretched further and further. Technology conversations included server and storage virtualization, tiered storage including SSD, fast FC and SAS disk drives, lower performance high capacity "fat" disk drives as well as tape not to mention tiered data protection, tiered servers and other related items.

The Green Gap continues to manifest itself in that when asked, most people do not have Green IT initiatives, however, when asked they do have power, cooling, floor-space, environmental (PCFE) or business economic sustainability concerns, aka, the rest of the Green story.

While some attendees have started to use some new technologies including dedupe technology, most I find are still using a combination of disk and tape with some considering dedupe for the future for certain applications. Other technologies and trends being watched, however also ones with concerns as to their stability and viability for enterprise use include FLASH based SSD, Cloud computing and thin provisioning among others. Common themes I hear from IT professionals are that these are technologies and tools to keep an eye on, or, use on a selective basis and are essentially tiered resources to have in a tool box of technologies to apply to different tasks to meet various service requirements. Hopefully the Cowboys can put a fraction of the amount of energy and interest into and improving their environment that the Dallas area IT folks are applying to their environments, especially given the strained IT budgets vs. the budget that the Cowboys have to work with for their player personal.

I always find it interesting when talking to groups of IT professionals which tend to be enterprise, SME and SMB hearing what they are doing and looking at or considering which often is in stark contrast to some of the survey results on technology adoption trends one commonly reads or hears about. Hummm, nuff said, what say you?

Hope to see you at one of the many upcoming events perhaps coming to a venue near you.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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SNW (And other conferences) Want and Need You!

Not to worry, its not yet time for phrases such as “Ask not what a conference can do for you, ask what you can do for a conference…”, at least I hope until some clever marketer tries that theme to stimulate conference participation short of an IT conference bailout package.

Uncle Conference wants you!

Conferences Want and Need You

Last week I received as did many other IT industry analyst, bloggers, consultants, media and press an invitation to apply and be considered for free admission (they waive the $1,000+ registration fee) to attend and cover the upcoming Computerworld/IDG and SNIA co-produced Storage Networking World (SNW) event in Orlando April 2009. Ok, nothing out of the ordinary here, as there are several events that do the same thing where you are sent out an invite to apply and attend and if accepted to attend, your registration fee is waived. Meanwhile other venues simply send you the pre-accepted invite and thanks for prior participating forgoing the whole apply, register and be accepted game.

What I find interesting here is that out of all the usual conference, expos, seminars and so forth that I get invited to attend, or to keynote and speak at, two stood out this past week. Those being SNW and the other being upstart The Business Development (BD) Event to be held in Boston in June 2009. Big vendor centric shows like EMCworld and VMworld among others will probably continue albeit with some fine tuning. While some vendors are cutting back or postponing their customer, or media and analyst events, as well as some of the large mega analyst firms like Gartner among others are cutting back or canceling their conferences due to tough economic times, events like the TechTarget Storage Decisions which are IT customer/user focused events are being fine tuned to be more effective as well as taking the message to the people who are under travel and time restrictions via custom local events and seminars.

Likewise, traditional big industry vertical shows like SNW are having to get more aggressive to get both their paying customers (e.g. vendor sponsors, media sponsors, people who pay the registration fee) to show up and participate as well as to get the industry analysts, bloggers, consultants, media and press to show up and cover the event. I’m guessing Jon Toigo over at Drunkendata must be salivating given some of his past posts that SNW is issuing announcements on MSNBC and other venues via Marketwire inviting industry media and analyst to attend the spring SNW. I wonder if Jon Toigo will be issuing similar announcements to all industry media and analyst or if his upcoming C4 conference in May will be an exclusive and by invitation only event?

In the face of all of these changes, there’s also a new upstart event for business development and networking amongst vendors, vars, press, media, analyst, customers, consultants and others, something that SNW used to be known for the storage industry as the place to go. In June 2009, a new event, "The BD Event" will be held in Boston with a simple value proposition, avoid the high costs and restrictions of some other venues, for a relatively small fee to basically cover cost, show up and meet and do some business.

What does this all mean and what will I be doing in 2009 regarding industry activities, seminars, shows, conferences and events?

I’m pleased to announce (don’t worry, I wont be issuing a press release as I did that this past week for my new book) that I have been accepted to attend SNW in Orlando, now I need to decide if I’m actually going to attend or not. I may end up doing what I did last fall which is fly in for a day for some meetings and tie into some other activities in the area.

I like the theme of the BD event in June and have it penciled in however have not committed with the Duplessie’s yet. Storage Decisions will be on the calendar as its a great place for meeting with and hearing what’s on the mind of the IT professionals as opposed to hearing it second or third hand from others. As for other venues and events, there will be more posted on the StorageIO events page through out the year.

Ok, nuff said for now

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved