Thanks to great volunteers and phenomenal presenters, we have been able to capture a bite size piece of the breakouts to share with everyone. The first series of sessions happened in Salon G of the downtown Marriott in Salt Lake City. Josh Allen was the VLCM representative who covered the presentations in that room, and had the opportunity to work with our partners- Brian Clark of VMware, Michael Ferguson representing Barracuda, and Jason Patterson from HP.
VMware – Brian Clark
“VMware Strategy: The Software-Defined Enterprise”
Brian presented at the VLCM IT exchange with his 20 years of sales experience as the Intermountain Region Partner Business Manager for VMware. He began his presentation with a fitting quote from the VMware CEO, Pat Gelsinger, “By the end of 2016, every relevant IT organization will have standardized on a software defined approach to IT – the key to creating an agile enterprise. VMware’s task is to help our customers transform to this new model as fast as possible.”
VMware is working to help customers escape the constraints of Legacy technology silos, and meet the demands of business expectations, while staying within the flat budgets that IT departments are faced with. The key to liberating valuable IT resources is the VMware Software-Defined Enterprise. As outlined in the attached presentation the journey is a three phase process that will lead you into extending virtualization to the entire data center. Please take the chance to review the full presentation through the link listed below, and if you have any questions we will be more than happy to answer them for you.
VMware Presentation - “VMware Strategy: The Software-Defined Enterprise”
Barracuda – Michael Ferguson
“Total Threat Protection – Securing All your Threat Vectors”
Michael Ferguson also presented and has 20 years of IT industry experience, specifically in Network and Security for Barracuda. He started off by reviewing a quick snapshot of Barracuda Networks. Founded in 2003, headquarter in Silicon Valley, Barracuda boasts offices in 15 countries with more than 1,300 employees worldwide. As displayed in the presentation listed below, Barracuda quickly outlines their comprehensive portfolio, covering both security and storage.
As organizations are increasingly vulnerable to cyber threats, Barracuda is looking to help shore up defenses not covered by traditional security. Companies are facing new and increased threats, from items like BYOD/Mobility, and web applications. With traditional approaches being too complex or too constrained, companies are left to figure out how to deal with challenges with their limited budgets. As outlined in the presentation in the link below, Barracuda deals with these issues with their portfolio, and centralized management to offer a range of options with simplicity on the backend. View the full presentation below and contact us for help fitting your data center with the right solution.
Barracuda Presentation - “Total Threat Protection – Securing All your Threat Vectors”
HP – Jason Patterson
“Preparing Your Network for Software-Defined Networking”
Jason Patterson was the last presentation in Room G and has an extensive HP field engineer background. He started off by talking about the evolution of network architectures, and the move towards open flow. The key to understand why and how to prep your network is to know what Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Openflow are and how they can benefit your company. SDN is an end-to-end solution to automate the network from data center to campus and branch. Openflow is a protocol for direct access to switch forwarding plane.
Key benefits of SDN include facts like:
- SDN can be applied to all types of networks
- Simplified Management
- Offers flexibility and innovation
- Promotes proprietary apps
As outlined in his presentation, Jason explains how HP creates an open SDN ecosystem that can automate policy for campus enterprise business application, and enable real-time threat detection, and allows both traditional and OpenFlow VLAN instances. As an example, an OpenFlow-compliant access point could distinguish between traffic from a YouTube app and a Microsoft Lync voice and messaging app, and attempt to provide a guaranteed quality of service for the VOIP traffic, but not for YouTube.
Gartner says “HP should be considered for the shortlists for all data center networking requirements, especially for organizations looking to simplify network operations and take advantage of SDN as part of their data center network evolution.”
View Jason's presentation below. We have expert solution architects standing by to help you understand your infrastructure.
HP Presentation “Preparing Your Network for Software Defined Networking”
We would like to thank our volunteer Josh Allen and presenters for a fantastic showing. Please join us for our second installment of this four part series by subscribing to our blog. More topics to come include presentations by Western Digital, LANDESK, and ShoreTel.
