We came, we saw, we Interoped. Six members of the Dell OEM Solutions team were in New York City for Interop 2010. Thank you to the 6100 technology and business leaders that came out to the event to hear the keynotes, speak with the exhibitors and play with some new hardware and software products being shown at the show.
There was a lot of the standard discussion around the standard tech specs of hardware and demonstrations of new software capabilities. Not surprisingly, there was also lots of buzz around the Cloud, virtualization, application and networking security. In fact, the Cloud Pavilion included a variety of companies, large and small, showing how the Cloud could be leveraged for consumers, businesses and public entities.
The Dell booth was no different, featuring a variety of technologies which could be virtualized and implemented in a traditional IT environment, in a public cloud or a private cloud. The networking gear, storage boxes and server blades were on display as in recent years, although this time they were integrated into larger solutions, including Dell’s Virtual Integrated System (VIS). One of the key messages of the Dell booth was that it isn’t just about the hardware.
Along those lines, Dell OEM Solution featured a kiosk, created by one of our OEM Partners, Kiosk Information Systems which demonstrated the value of OEM Solutions and captured contact information for people looking to further engage with the team. We also highlighted solutions of a couple of our OEM Customers, Polycom and Enterasys. In each of these cases, we were demonstrating our capabilities to help companies leverage Dell technology in a way that enables these companies to focus on their IP and value add to their end users.
New VP and GM of Dell Networking presented the keynote on day 2 of the event on the challenges and opportunities of living and doing business in the Virtual Era. For a good idea on the scale of the reach, there are over one billion people connected through Dell powered clouds. For more on this keynote, check out the post here.
In addition to the Expo Hall, we also spoke with attendees at a reception on Wednesday afternoon, after the show ended for the day. There were representatives from a wide variety of companies watching the baseball playoffs and interacting on topics including packet security, product customization, increased technology partnerships and their vision of how the Cloud will affect their businesses. In particular, Franklin Flint, Global Enterprise Technology Evangelist, provided his insight on many of these topics, at least, before losing his voice in part due to the conversations with attendees and bloggers all day. In fact, 2 blog posts on these interactions have already gone live and you can read what they had to say at Absolutelywindows.com and Chipchick.com.
The entire team found the show a fantastic opportunity to catch up on the latest trends in the industry, particularly in the networking and communications areas. Thanks again for everyone who came out and we’re looking forward to further engagement at Interop Las Vegas in May, 2011.
Learn more about Dell OEM Solutions and follow Jeff on Twitter at @jeffotchis.