The best days at work are the days when your mind gets blown – literally. I had one of those days last week at Storage Field Day in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Over the span of four hours, I witnessed the power of our company in the raw. Three Dell storage teams, ScaleIO, Unity and Isilon presented their product line and underlying technology advances to a group of influential storage experts who wouldn’t hesitate to take the presenter apart, should they sense weakness – literally.
Talking storage
The product presentations were held in the context of Storage Field Day, an event where IT vendors have the opportunity to showcase their latest product developments to a forum of very technical influencers who were hand selected for the technology, in this case, storage. This is not a sales or marketing event, but rather an expert geek-out where no deep technical question is off limits. Gaining the trust of this particular group is crucial for any IT vendor because the independent expert voice of each of the influencers carries weight with CIOs and IT decision makers who are leading their company’s Digital transformation agenda.
Gaining trust
Trust and mutual respect, at a deeply technical level, is built over time in expert discussions between top technical talent in the industry and at the IT vendor. Often times it’s not for the faint-hearted because discussions can get heated and passionate. Our Dell storage teams knew that and came prepared for deep dives into ScaleIO, Unity and Isilon. Check out the Storage Field Day 13 video playlist on Youtube.
Calling out a few of the videos to give a taste of the level of expertise in the room:
- Dell ScaleIO Vision and Architecture with Erez Webman
- Dell Unity Product Overview and Architecture with Pierluca Chiodelli and Kaushik Ghosh
- Dell Isilon Introduction with John Har
- Dell Isilon F800 Performance with Anton Rang
Engaging with influencers
Engaging influencers around the transformational work the ScaleIO, Unity and Isilon teams are doing, in the larger context of supporting our customers’ IT transformation journey, allows the teams to keep a finger on the racing pulse of technological development and to build trust on via the right conversations with the right people in an open and transparent way.
Helping customers
IT Transformation is the very first step on an organization’s digital transformation journey. For a company of any size, it means finding a trusted partner who helps them realize that this journey can be completed in steps, at the speed and investment level that is right for their business and, most importantly, that it helps to create a better experience for their own customers. For the IT vendor, it is a great responsibility to build the best possible IT solutions, beginning with the most advanced technology building blocks.
Interested in IT Transformation and how your company fares on the IT Transformation Maturity Curve? Check out our IT Transformation podcast series, Luminaries – Talking to the brightest minds in tech!
