The Gartner Data Center Conference opened this morning and over the next three days, I’ll get to know a number of EMC customers better, learning about where their IT operations are heading over the next few years.
Gartner conferences attract some of the industry’s most forward-thinking CIOs and data center managers. While their IT organizations are at different stages, they all have one thing in common: a desire to transform IT efficiency and effectiveness.
These managers are facing some familiar challenges: exploding data growth, mounting pressure to cut operational costs, and increasingly complex regulatory requirements and security threats. Other challenges have cropped up recently, like the emergence of mobile computing and the need to access data anywhere at any time.
I’m sure there are people here to learn how they can address many of these challenges simultaneously. Personally, I can’t wait to get down to details of EMC’s “three pillars” approach with storage solutions at the infrastructure layer, VMware’s hypervisor and software-defined data center tech at the virtualization layer, and Pivotal for big and fast data applications on top.
But I know IT leaders will be looking for more than just product specs. They also want to know:
- how to tailor this tech to their own unique use cases,
- how to automate processes that have cost thousands of man-hours already,
- how to position IT as a service broker for their business instead of a roadblock.
This is where things get more complex – and even more interesting. What I’m hearing from customers is that the rapidly changing face of IT has created a pronounced skills gap within IT organizations. While an event like this is ideal for helping close those gaps, what if you want more? And what about educating an entire IT staff?
Education and technical expertise are essential to deploying today’s tech effectively and making IT transformation a reality. That’s why EMC offers a host of cloud and data science education programs running independently from strategic events like Gartner Data Center.
If you are at the show, join me in discussing these topics in greater detail during my session, “The Role of IT in Creating an Agile, Predictive Enterprise” on Tuesday, December 10th at 1:45-2:30pm PT in Veronese 2404.
Better yet, stop by the EMC booth.
While I would love to share our story with you in person, I’m actually a lot more interested in hearing yours.
