"I.T. Solutions Using Blades"
Article by Chris Hipp and Nelson Stewart
Delivering increasing levels of service, reducing complexity, lowering costs, and ensuring availability are just a few of today's challenges. Data Centers must be high performance, reliable, efficient and as scalable as services demand - without disruption -- and easily managed from anywhere at anytime. Finally, solutions must satisfy adherence to regulatory and compliance guidelines. [ more]
Building on a Solid Foundation - BladeS & PPM Media
An interview with Jim Hall, President of BladeS, and Philip McKay, President and CEO of PPM Media, and advisor to BladeS: 
Q: What are the key highlights of the recent change of relationship between the Blade Systems Alliance and PPM Media?
Jim: Over the last year, the Board of Directors of the Blade Systems Alliance has developed a tremendous rapport with Phil McKay and his team at PPM Media. The common thread for the evolution of this relationship – is a singular focus on building a blade-technology Community consisting of end users, analysts, and vendors. When we convened at the first Blade Systems Insight (BSI) in Savannah last year, we were all impressed to witness this Community manifest itself.
Phil: The BladeSystems Insight event is all about bringing together and growing the community of IT end-users, vendors and thought leaders. From the beginning, Blade Systems Alliance was a key association partner and its support has helped us build this event. The relationship has now evolved into a true working partnership and collaborative relationship, and one of the results is that all summit sponsors now receive an automatic associate membership to BladeS, with the higher level sponsors getting a special offer for executive membership and a seat on the BladeS board. We believe that’s a great benefit for vendors and the community at large.
Q: Can you summarize the benefits to each organization under this new arrangement?
Jim: We recognize that the more BladeSystems Insight’s brand succeeds both domestically and globally, the larger the Community becomes, which benefits our members.
Phil: For PPM Media, the membership tie-in is certainly one more compelling benefit for vendors sponsoring the BladeSystems Insight summit. We also recognize the fact that as more and more active members join BladeS, the stronger position we will all be in to collectively drive this community on a global basis.
Q: What are some new joint efforts that might be in the works?
Jim: BladeS recently adopted several collaborative initiatives that will simultaneously increase our membership and focus our time and talent on growing this Community. These include:
A new jointly sponsored web based marketing initiative to focus on blade community understanding and value creation that also impacts all of the major technology platforms and standards in today’s data center.
And as Phil mentioned earlier, all sponsors at BladeSystems Insight 2008 receive a complimentary Associate Membership to the alliance, with platinum level sponsors and above receiving a major discount for becoming an Executive Board Member, based on active BladeS involvement commitments.
Phil: In addition to what I’ve already covered, we are working together on new marketing and communications initiatives including cooperating on a BladeS eNewsletter, linking our respective web sites, webinars (one of which we recently completed), and other platforms to communicate to our community on an on-going basis.
Q: How can BladeS member companies leverage and benefit from this new relationship?
Jim: With our expanding membership base, active End User Council, analysts as members, multiple successful BladeSystems Insight events worldwide, and proactive support from our Marketing, Technical and Interoperability Committees, the prospects for BladeS Community building in 2008 are more impressive than ever before.
Phil: Current BladeS members should contact us to become part of the BladeSystems Insight summit (if they have not already signed on) to be fully exposed to the community we’re bringing together. Please get in touch with our Vice President of Business Development, Paul Samargedlis, at 603-66... or paul.samargedlis@ppmmedia.com.
Q: Any additional comments you would like to make to the readers of this newsletter?
Jim: Blade Systems Alliance is focused on blade community development, strategic alliances with contributing industry associations, industry analysts, and industry leaders that collectively bring the resources & understanding together for the benefit of the blade end user community.
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DMTF 2008 Technical Symposium
Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF)
2008 Alliance Partner Technical Symposium
March 25th - March 28th, 2008.
San Jose, CA
Registration is now open for the DMTF 2008 Alliance Partner Technical Symposium (2008 APTS). The event will take place at the Dolce Hayes Mansion, San Jose, California.
This event is open to all BladeS members without charge. Please register at http://www.dmtf.org/events/alliancepartners/register/
The 2008 APTS is jointly hosted by the Distributed Management Task Force, and the Storage Networking Industry Association. The DMTF and SNIA have a number of alliance partners who are actively working on industry standards. The annual Alliance Partner Technical Symposium is a great place to get greater communication, cooperation and education about this ongoing work.
Thursday (March 27) of the symposium has been dedicated to all alliance partners to briefly update everyone on their latest work and for interactive discussions. In addition, work group meetings are being set up on the other days around specific topics that involve two or more alliance partners.
Also this year, there is an all day Green Summit on Tuesday with participation from the Green Grid, DMTF, OGF and SNIA.
More information about the 2008 Alliance Partner Technical Symposium is located at: http://www.dmtf.org/events/2008apts/
Registration can be completed at: http://www.dmtf.org/events/alliancepartners/register/
A special room rate at the Dolce Hayes Mansion of $159/night is available for all 2008 APTS attendees. The rate code and reservation instructions are available during the registration process. Please book your accommodation before the deadline of March 14th.
BladeSystems Insight Webinar Series
The BladeSystems Insight Webinar Series was kicked off on January 30. Titled "Data Centers Opportunities for Today's Solution Providers", the webinar was moderated by Casey Hughes, and highlighted analysts Barb Goldworm and Jerald Murphy, and BladeS president Jim Hall.
Attended by an audience of thirty-three, the webinar generated the following results:
"The information shared today was useful" - 88.0%
"The presenters today were well prepared and knowledgeable" - 92.0%" "This webinar program has increased my understanding of the Blade Systems Summit event and the value for my company to participate" - 92.0%
The schedule and topic of the next webinar will be announced shortly. Stay tuned.
Fireside Chat with Philip McKay
The recent announcement of a delay in the European BSI (BladeSystems Insight) caught a few BladeS members by surprise. This newsletter caught up with Philip McKay, President and CEO of PPM Media for an inside look at the challenges of building an event like BSI globally.
Q: Having completed one and now well into organizing the second U.S. BladeSystems Insight event, what have you found to be the most challenging in initiating a technology event?
Phil: It’s a two-fold answer. First of all, launching any new brand in the crowded technology event space is challenging. We had the advantage of focusing on a very relevant and growing area like blades, and gaining the support of key community members like BladeS and many other associations. Any event launch needs to show strong community support to really get traction. Secondly, now that we’re into our second year and have most of the foundation built, we are expanding BladeSystems Insight into a broader data center event and so in some ways it’s still a “launch.” We’re introducing a whole new “Insight on Virtualization” program at the summit led by a renowned industry author and analyst, and in storage we have a panel moderated by SNIA. So the challenge is not just to grow the event, but to make sure it evolves in a way that mirrors and supports where the industry is going next.
Q: Were there any surprise learnings from the first BSI event that you will now incorporate into the second?
Phil: I’m not sure there were many surprises, but we certainly have a deeper understanding of the community and their needs. For example, we knew that certain vertical industries are the major adopters of blades and related technologies, and this time around we are creating special outreach to key end-users in education, healthcare, energy, the motion picture industry and other areas.
Q: How were the end-user attendees solicited the first time around? How are you expanding on that for future events?
Phil: That’s one of the factors that makes this model unique. We are not a trade show or traditional conference. We don’t do mass mailings. We will continue to invite the most qualified end-user executives through email invitations and telemarketing outreach by our audience acquisition specialists. Certainly, as we involve more of the community associations and vendors and research organizations and media partners, we have a more robust database and more channels from which to find the right people. And one opportunity we provide our sponsors is the chance to invite some of their key customers and prospects as hosted delegates.
Q: Analysts are predicting that the blade adoption rate in Europe and Asia is going to exceed that of North America. What are the plans for international BSI events, including the recently rescheduled BladeSystems Insight Europe?
Phil: "BladeSystems Insight Europe 2008," originally scheduled for March, will now take place from October 12-14, 2008. The venue remains the Hotel Tivoli Marinotel, The Algarve, Portugal. Moving the European summit to fall 2008 is advantageous for several reasons. First, it allows us to focus on the U.S. summit this May in Tucson which has incredible momentum and will be utilized as a platform to promote the European event. In fact, we will have a VIP program where key European companies and end-users will visit the U.S. event and see our business model in action. Secondly, it enables us to position the event in a completely different timeframe than CeBIT and a couple of smaller European events that address the data center space. Finally, the move from spring to fall provides more runways to recruit and deliver an outstanding audience of European end-user executives and engage the vendor and press community. Holding the European event in the fall of 2008 also serves as a strong lead-in to our next international extension of the BladeSystems Insight brand, the launch of an Asia-Pac summit in early 2009. We are in the process of evaluating date and venues now.
Q: How does the geographically diverse nature of the European and Asia regions and countries make your oversea events more challenging to organize?
Phil: We have partner companies on the ground in both Europe and Asia that are part of PPM Media, know our model, and have worked with us for many years. Their local knowledge combined with their experience working with our team breaks down many of the cultural and geographical barriers. We believe we will be successful in launching in both of these areas. As a matter of fact, BSI Europe has a strong foundation of global vendors that have already signed on for the event.
Q: For vendor companies that are global, how can their U.S. operations (which may already have a relationship with PPM Media and the Blade Systems Alliance) help in the process of convincing their foreign counterparts to participate in the regional BSI? Do you have a sales kit that may help them help you?
Phil: The many global companies that have participated in our U.S. summit act as evangelists about the audience, business value, and ROI of our summits. They’ve seen our summit firsthand and can communicate to their global counterparts. This has a positive affect on their global business relationships – and ours.
Q: Will there be discounts for companies that sign up for the U.S. event to participate in EU and Asia events? Like a bundle deal...?
Phil: Yes, we will be announcing multi-event sponsor packages for our international BladeSystems Insight summits.
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