I’ve just returned from HP’s biggest user event for the year, Discover
2012. As we from the NonStop crowd have come to expect, this years’
conference was large and impressive – similar to what we’ve seen in previous
years. I for one was pleasantly surprised with the conference layout this
year. There’s no getting around the fact that, as a conference hosting
towards 15,000 people, there’s going to be some significant distances (and
crowds!) involved, but this year it seemed easier to find what you were looking
for, with other things like registration and meals handled better than
previously. One standout improvement was the location of the NonStop
partners – we had our own signposted area, co-located with the HP NonStop
group, which meant much less traipsing back and forth to engage with our HP
colleagues.
In terms of content, we saw some excellent keynote sessions. Meg
Whitman took the stage on Tuesday morning to outline her three-pronged
corporate strategy, focussed on cloud, security and information optimisation
(or big data management). This in turn was layered over the 4 main areas
of offering that HP provides – infrastructure, software, services and
solutions. All good stuff. Meg went on to discuss a number of HP
customer case studies, which (by my count) were all NonStop customers, perhaps
bar one. State Bank of India, a massive NonStop user in the card payments
space, was one example, and as we all know, they’ve been happy NonStop users
for many years. It was great to see NonStop getting such prominence, even
if it was implied – and this fact was referred to by other HP NED/BCS execs
over the coming days. Meg then introduced Jeffrey Katzenberg, from
Dreamworks, who gave a very entertaining presentation, including live animals
(!), and a sneak-peak of the upcoming Madagascar movie – some of the stats
around production of a Dreamworks animated presentation are quite
astounding. The 2 ½ minute Madagascar promo that we saw took an amazing
6TB of storage. Three seconds of animation can take a skilled animator a
week to complete. Each movie takes an average of 5 years to produce, and
3D is complicating things even further. Of course, HP provides the
infrastructure that underpins everything Dreamworks does, and this was
refreshing to hear from such a creative environment where hardware components
are often assumed to be of a different flavour.
Other notable sessions included the HP NonStop: The Platform for
Continuous Business, presented by Ric Lewis and Randy Myer, which for most of
us was our first chance to see Ric presenting on NonStop. He came across
as very aware of the value that NonStop brings to HP, and very understanding of
the considerable legacy that a lot of us bring to the NonStop environment.
Everyone at the show seemed extremely upbeat about the enthusiastic way Ric has
jumped into his role. If you want to hear more from Ric and Randy, I
would recommend this interview that they gave at the show: http://t.co/XGTj3Fq2
Closer to home, Karen Copeland, NonStop Security Product Manager,
presented a couple of times on NonStop security. It’s always great to see
what’s coming up in this critical area, and it’s even nicer when you see a few
of your products forming an important part of the HP product roadmap. As
usual, Karen did an excellent job.
Another interview I’ve come across since the show completed is Rafal Los
(Twitter: @Wh1t3Rabbit), Chief Security Evangelist at HP, interviewing HP NED
Master Technologist Justin Simmonds – Raf is well known in security circles and
Justin does a great job of bringing him up to speed on NonStop. Take a
listen at http://bit.ly/Ks8Cez.
Wednesday evening saw the hosting of the NonStop Community Reception,
which was held thanks to the generosity of twenty-one NonStop vendors, at the
Grand Lux Café. This turned out to be a fantastic event, not just for
catching up with old friends, but for making new ones as well, with many different
vendors and NonStop users represented. Indeed, we estimated there to be
over 200 people there at the peak of the gathering – it got quite cozy in that
relatively small room! Still, a great night – thank you again to all the
vendors who helped make it possible.
Things started winding down on Thursday, with many having just enough
energy to checkout the entertainment for the week – Sheryl Crow and Don
Henley. Excellent food and cocktails were a welcome accompaniment to some
fantastic music.
All in all, another excellent conference. We look forward to the
NonStop Technical Boot Camp that was just announced for San Jose Oct 14-16, and
to doing it all again in Vegas next year!
Andrew Price
HP NonStop Server Security
and Encryption Solutions
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