WOW – what a whirlwind week last week!
Year after year, the Supercomputing conference never ceases to get me amped. I love the energy and excitement of companies looking for bleeding-edge tech that will empower them to grow bigger and faster, as their HPC environments go above and beyond.
The rain late this week didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits and we charged ahead to do what we love to do at these conferences — hang out with customers and get the word on the street of what people want and need for their data-intensive computing needs.
Some quick highlights:
- It was clear that the HPC community sees scalability as critical to their businesses. Our Isilon booth never stopped buzzing and my session on maximizing the value of Big Data in HPC environments was standing room only.
- Our customer, DigitalGlobe, presented at a dinner for potential customers at the lovely Lecosho along the Seattle Harbor Steps. The room was filled to the max as folks were hungry to learn how to accelerate the performance of their Big Data (as well as for some of the amazing grilled octopus served there!).
- Special thanks to our partner, Intel, with whom we tag-teamed for session and booth support at the conference, as well as customers like Columbia University, who helped spread the word on computing-intensive demands
- And last but not least, we wanted to give a quick shout out to our favorite magician, Scott Tokar, who is a perfect partner in crime for wowing customers with the ability to do things people never thought could be done.
After having the opportunity to meet with hundreds of folks, these are my key takeaways coming from this year’s SC’11:
- The cutting-edge requirements that were once only needed in HPC are quickly becoming the enterprise-wide standard. The demand for Big Data and HPC is stronger than ever across industries.
- We’ve set the bar for Scale-Out when it comes to capacity and performance. No one wants to sacrifice one for the other – and no one wants to introduce complexity to scale either. We deliver a unique technology that allows companies to grow capacity with performance, and we keep it simple – without compromise.
- While Big Data means different things to different companies, there’s one thing that’s universal–scale. All companies are growing and they want technology that can keep up with them in a seamless, simple manner.
The conference was a good validation that here at EMC Isilon, we’re on the right track. We’re excited to take this energy and drive this momentum toward all the great things we have in store for 2012!
