This year’s HP Discover experience was a bit different than years past. Most likely because we didn’t have a community party. However, I did meet lots and lots of new people than in previous years and believe they will become party of our community. This is goodness for HP, the event and for Connect.
There were over 500 sessions to choose from, SIG meetings, and great keynotes. The event was in a different hall at the Sands convention center but I actually liked the layout better. You could easily find what you were looking for. Discover as well as our Connect Boot Camps are always a wonderful reminder of why we are relevant and certainly validates our pillars of philanthropy, advocacy, community and education.
P.A.C.E.
Our theme this year was Race to Win and we certainly ‘PACED’ ourselves to ensure we could go the distance. Our members received a ‘key’ to their success, a travel kit and several won great racing giveaways including performance glasses, watches and we even raffled off a few HP ENVY X2’s. But all good drivers know that. And in this dynamic IT race you need a good pit crew and the Connect team was there to support current and new members.
Connect’s VP, Henk Pomper came up with PACE – If you don’t know Henk, you certainly will in 2014 as he will take the reins from Steve Davidek who has been doing a great job over the past 1 ½ years. Henk, Steve, Heinz-Hermann Adam led Connect’s quarterly board meeting prior to HP Discover. We were joined by our new HP liaison, Susan Underhill, Vice-President of ExpertOne.
Bumps and Bruises
Thank you Rachel from CompetenC Solutions for suggesting this blog title. Perfect! We introduced our Enterprise Networking SIG this week and it was awesome seeing how a new SIG can blossom from HP’s growing presence in the Networking space. Several attendees were Cisco customers who came to hear about the ‘bumps and bruises’ that current HPN customers might be facing in their implementations.
At that moment, the meeting belonged to the users and we witnessed the magic. My guess is that new friendships were forged. We could have gone on long after an hour but sometimes these events can be like speed dating….just when you get to the good stuff, it’s time to move to the next session.
Our takeaways from the new SIG were that they wanted more education around IMC, IRF and SDN and they wanted a private place where they could chat with each other. They gave us great ideas on how we can facilitate their SIG.
In the end no one endured any bumps or bruises and to the surprise of the Cisco users, neither did the HPN customers.
Meg and the Media
The media was kind to HP and Meg Whitman this week as she continues to steer HP into a profitable strategic direction. She was also featured on CNBC’s Squawkbox live from Las Vegas. Hats off to Meg for getting up so early!!! Check out the excerpts http://www.cnbc.com/id/100810220
To everyone’s surprise Kevin Bacon joined the HP executive keynote line up on Tuesday by introducing Meg. Aside from his being ‘footloose’ and famous, Kevin is also popular for the 6 Degrees of Separation game proving basically that we are all connected. Bacon went on to say that “Technology is about the end of separation” or “zero degrees of separation.” He characterized HP solutions that made a difference in the daily lives of people as the “Big Wows” that matter to him. You can check Kevin’s keynote out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_XPHxL5rSw
Yes, Kevin, in our world we believe everyone is Connected too!
The Cube
As always it was great chatting with John Furrier and Dave Vellante of The Cube. The Cube has been reporting live from HP Discover over the past few years as well as many other technology events. Below is my interview with them:
As you can see there was really LOTS going in at Discover and in case you missed this year’s event, I hope you find my longwinded recap useful. Before I get to HP’s news, I’d like to share some community news.
Congratulations to XYPRO, winner of this year’s HP NonStop Partner of the Year. This was announced at Discover and we salute the entire XYPRO team for this tremendous honor!
Connect members participated in a 1 day pre-conference advocacy event for HP ExpertOne on IT education and customer needs. Sixty per cent of the attendees were Connect members and both HP and Connect benefitted from the opportunity to share their feedback. We will, of course, share the results with the broader community.
And now for HP’s product news announcements….
Storage Innovations
The HP Discover 2013 event is livelier than ever and this morning everyone is talking about the new innovations coming out of HP Storage.
Today’s customers are tapping into flash-based storage technology to maintain their service level demands and achieve the performance standards needed for new computing workloads and applications. However, legacy storage platforms just can’t maximize flash’s potential and may cause performance bottlenecks.
To address these challenges HP announced the following:
HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 Storage system – An all-flash, solid-state optimized array that delivers more than 500,000 input/output operations per second with less than .6 millisecond response time. The system assures business continuity with persistent technologies that provide constant application access in the event of local hardware issues or multi-site disasters. New software and SAN infrastructure for the entire HP 3PAR StoreServ family strengthens enterprise security for advanced data encryption to help healthcare, finance and government customers meet compliance requirements.
HP StoreOnce VSA – A second- generation software-defined storage offering that deploys as a virtual machine on existing servers. This eliminates the need for customers to buy dedicated hardware and enables backup as a service offering for hosting providers. The StoreOnce VSA also helps lower costs for enterprise remote office protection.
HP StoreEver MSL6480 Tape Library - A scalable offering that has enterprise-class features for long-term data protection at a midrange price.
Big data has become a big buzzword in 2013. It’s also a big buzz word here at HP Discover with several announcements coming out across HP to help customers capitalize on big data!
Research commissioned on behalf of HP (1) found that nearly 60 percent of companies will spend at least 10 percent of their innovation budget on big data this year. The study also found, however, that more than one in three organizations have failed with a big data initiative at some point. HP’s expanded big data portfolio aims to address these issues, enabling organizations to gain better insight into their data and deliver real-time outcomes.
HAVEn, a big data analytics platform, which leverages HP’s analytics software, hardware and services to create the next generation of big data-ready analytics applications and solutions will help organizations reap the rewards of big data.
Avoid vendor lock-in with an open architecture that supports a broad range of analytics tools
Protect investments with support for multiple virtualization technologies.
Speed time to value with highly optimized hardware solutions.
Gain value from 100 percent of information, including structured, semi-structured and unstructured data, via HP’s portfolio of more than 700 connectors into HAVEn.
The first integrated big data analytics solution built on HAVEn is HP Operations Analytics, which delivers insight into all aspects of IT operations, so organizations can ensure quality service levels. The solution allows organizations to efficiently consume, manage and analyze massive streams of IT operational data from a variety of HP products, including HP ArcSight Logger and the HP Business Service Management portfolio, as well as third-party sources.
To help clients improve customer engagement and speed response to market opportunities, HP Enterprise Services has introduced HP Actionable Analytics Services. These solutions enable clients to implement analytics and extract insight hidden within big data, as well as streamline key organizational processes.
Technology Services has also expanded its Big Data Consulting Practice to ensure optimal IT infrastructure performance as well as support for increasing big data demands. New offerings include IT Strategy and Architecture, System Infrastructure, and Protection services that enable clients to align their IT infrastructure to organizational goals, while achieving compliance with industry standards and government regulations.
Finally, HP announced two additional products to help on the journey:
The HP Vertica Community Edition—free, downloadable software that delivers the same functionality of the HP Vertica Analytics Platform Enterprise Edition with no commitments or time limits, allowing clients to analyze up to 1 terabyte of data before investing in an enterprise-wide solution.
The HP Autonomy Legacy Data Cleanup—information governance solution that helps clients analyze legacy data, lower costs and reduce risks while driving value from big data. With this solution, organizations can access, understand and classify, as well as defensibly dispose of outdated and unnecessary legacy information, while retaining data deemed valuable for production applications.
“Big Data and Cloud,” Coleman Parkes Research, Ltd., May 2013.
HP Cloud
We might be in the desert, but everywhere I look I’m seeing clouds!
According to research commissioned by HP, by 2016 75 percent of enterprise IT will be delivered across private, managed and public cloud. Inspired by this, HP came out with a number of new cloud offerings here at HP Discover.
HP Cloud OS – Powered by OpenStack this open, extensible cloud technology platform enables workload portability, simplified installation and enhanced life cycle management across hybrid clouds. The technology is already embedded in CloudSystem products, but will now be offered as part of the HP CloudSystem Enterprise Starter Suite, available on HP Moonshot Servers and leveraged by HP Cloud Services public cloud offerings.
HP Converged Cloud Professional Services – A comprehensive set of integrated, end-to-end lifecycle services designed to help customers take advantage of the cloud. These new offerings include HP Converged Cloud Support, HP Cloud Design Service, HP Cloud-ready Networking Services, HP Proactive Care for CloudSystem, and HP Cloud Security Risk and Controls Advisory Services, as well as enhancements to HP Applications Transformation to Cloud Services.
HP Enterprise Services – Enhancements to its portfolio of cloud service offerings to address customer needs for mobile and enterprise applications. Offerings include: HP Enterprise Cloud Services for Enterprise Applications, HP Mobile Enterprise Cloud Solution, HP Enterprise Cloud Services - Private Cloud, HP Cloud Security Risk and Control Advisory Services.
Autonomy Marketing Cloud -- A cloud-based version of the Autonomy Marketing Performance Suite, enabling organizations to understand, attract, engage and convert customers in real time.
HP Public Cloud Services – New capabilities to make it easier and faster for enterprise to simplify the development and deployment of applications in the public cloud.
HP Financial Services – New IT investment solutions to help free up capital and align with business needs including: Capacity on Demand and a new global relationship agreement providing customers with a single umbrella contract, and process and service arrangement for all cloud and traditional IT investments along with asset recovery services worldwide.
I know it’s a lot to take in but there was certainly a lot to share.
I’m not going to comment on the Santana/Los Lonely Boys concert because I must admit I did not attend. After reading this blog, you can understand that I was out of steam and needed to recharge my battery. Yes, even the energizer bunny’s battery needs to be plugged in from time to time I did hear that it was beyond awesome and that the tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan was tear inducing.
Lastly, I want to give a shout out to Connect member Henrich Jakes, a great leader, brilliant IT strategist and all around good guy. I’m so honored to call Henrich my friend. If you don’t know him, you should ‘connect’ with him. Your life will be richer for doing so.
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Wednesday, June 05, 2013
BYO? – It’s Complicated
It seems the world is now bringing EVERTHING to work these days, from their own device(s), information, storage, lunch, dog etc….. Gartner predicts that by 2017, half of employers may require workers to bring in their own devices. This presents a huge challenge and/or opportunity for CIO’s and businesses to either harness the power of BYOD or risk the loss of productivity that comes with being connected 24 x 7 x 360 to information that could potentially grow the business. This is surely a dilemma that could lead to BYOB (bottle, in case you weren’t sure) if not architected, implemented and managed properly with infrastructure and policies.
CIO’s have options and simple economics is not the only driving factor to decision making. Other factors to consider are security and culture including personal device preference and work/life balance. One BYOD strategy includes a corporate-owned, personally enabled device or COPE. This gives more control to the business; but could impact the user if it doesn’t come with their favorite carrier, capacity, music app, camera…you get the picture. The other is the bite the bullet approach. Managing BYOD from a hardware/software approach that still gives the business control, but allows the user to choice over device and carrier. This could be an opportunity for some to save millions in device and service charges if the employee paid for the device. While this may sound draconian, a lot of employees would like to know that either a) that don’t need to carry 2 smartphones b) big brother is not monitoring your Words with Friends games….sorry Alec Baldwin.
While many claim that BYOD in its current form will not last. I say, nothing in its current form lasts especially in IT! IT Companies, like HP, are continuously responding to customer and industry demands to improve their products and solutions. And my intellectual response to that is ‘DUH!’
Infrastructure and Policy
In a recent CompTIA report, data shows that networking infrastructure was one of CIOs' top priorities for this year. The same report rated 'networking/infrastructure' as the top IT skill as related to business, like increasing bandwidth and upgrading packet-shaping devices with more robust units. While Cisco has always been a leader in networking products and solutions, HP is nipping (actually gnawing) at their heels. HP Networking has four dedicated labs and is profitable. Yes, I used profitable and HP in the same sentence. There is also a strong training and certification program to support it (HP ExpertOne). But hardware and software alone will not mitigate risk. There has to be user education and policy in place that protects the company yet doesn’t impede the employee’s personal use of their PDA. It’s quite the balancing act.
Users know best
Connect launched a BYOD tour earlier this year. This has been a great opportunity to learn from subject matter experts and from peers who have faced or are facing the challenges and opportunities that come with BYOD. So far the tour has traveled to Austin, Tampa and Miami. Next stop is Bellevue, WA (Seattle) on August 27th and the DC area in the fall (date/location TBD). To keep up with all the latest on all things Enterprise Networking, bookmark wwww.connect-netsig.com. Based on what I’ve experienced and heard at the other events, this is definitely a special interest group (SIG) you want to be part of. Connect will also be hosting two SIG meetings at HP Discover www.hp.com/go/discover next week in Las Vegas. BYOD can be complicated. Networking with peers and experts at minimum will validate that you’re not alone, and at best give you information that you need to succeed in implementing and/or maximizing your company’s enterprise networking hardware, software and policies for BYOD.
Cheers!
@ninabuik
PS….I didn’t intentionally reference Alec Baldwin twice in this blog post - Words with Friends and the movie It’s Complicated – I guess I had a BYOB experience – Bring your own Baldwin
Last week at Interop in Las Vegas, Connect launched its new Enterprise Networking Special Interest Group (SIG). We met with lots of HP customers who shared a consistent message with us that was a keen reminder of why community matters. “We want to meet with other users.” “Will there be chapters in our area?” “Will my requests get back to HP?”
Advocacy + Community + Education = Timeless
It put an extra bounce in our step to know that after years of being part of, leading and now supporting our community, what we do makes a difference and helps our members grow personally and professionally. Connect was in the HPN NDA room all week and on Wednesday evening, Connect and HP held a joint reception at Red Square (Mandalay Bay) where Bethany Mayer, Senior Vice President and General Manager of HP Networking, introduced Connect and the new Enterprise Networking SIG with great enthusiasm and support.
As I worked the room, I met a gentleman from GoodWill Industries who was enjoying the opportunity to ‘connect’ with folks. We talked more about working for organizations that help people and the delicious signature drink, the “Moscow Mule”, than talking tech. But he did ask me if I knew anyone at the party that he could speak with about BYOD. I quickly scanned the room and found the right resource. Mission accomplished – I made a new friend and helped him to boot! I so look forward to visiting GoodWill when we hold take our Networking SIG Innovation tour to Bellevue, WA on August 27th.
Our new Enterprise Networking SIG has over 300 members and is growing! Considering the growth of HP Networking, this is no surprise. Add to that, HP Networking has four labs around the world where innovation is brewing daily. We have dedicated a site to the new SIG which will be filled with valuable information on tour dates, documents/journals/eBooks and ways to stay connected. Visit www.connect-netsig.com.
Interop was a big event for HP and HP Networking. Here’s a rundown of the news:
Key Value Statement: SDN Fabric for cloud enables business agility for clients by delivering two times greater scalability and 75 percent less complexity over current network fabrics while reducing network provisioning time from months to minutes.
Key Value Statement: HP highlights the outcomes achieved by three data-driven organizations that chose HP Networking data center solutions to make better IT decisions, improve operational efficiencies and enhance business continuity, while laying the foundation for future growth.
Note:
I had the opportunity to sit next to guys from PCL. I enjoyed their genuine perspective on technology, HP and a variety of other topics that we managed to table chat about in such a short time. I hope they come to HP Discover!
Speaking of HP Discover
We will host our first official Networking SIG meeting in Las Vegas on Thursday, June 13 at 11:00 AM (session ID=RT3515). Led by our Networking SIG chair, Heinz-Hermann Adam and HP liaison, Alicia Moody, this is your opportunity to meet with other users, make product recommendations, ask the experts and shape the future of the new SIG.
If you haven’t registered yet, go to www.hpdiscover.com and register today! While there are many codes floating around with the same value, using promo code UG2013 will identify you as a member of the Connect community and get you a member appreciation gift in the community lounge!
We have so much planned for you at Discover – we look forward to seeing you there!
In July 1969, after years of research and development, the US successfully put the first man on the moon on Apollo 11. This disruption officially launched a new race to explore the universe through the convergence of science and technology. I was only eight years old but I remember being glued to the television as I witnessed history unfold.
In my mind, we had reached what was infinitely impossible and then we went beyond. News traveled at the speed of three television stations, radio and newspaper back then. While the incredible news still managed to go viral through very limited media, it heralded the launch of something even bigger – our imaginations to create technology that transforms our world.
Over the years disruptions, like the Internet and social media, have transformed the world. And today, HP announced another innovation that will change the way we compute the massive amounts of data that we consume and transmit every second. Today HP launched its own innovation disruption, HP Moonshot.
HP Moonshot Media Day
I attended the media coverage of the announcement and even got my question answered during the presentation (impressive!). Customers were on hand to share their implementation of Moonshot in three different businesses. They each talked about scalability and simplicity which are now part of HP’s enterprise mantra (plus security!).
Under the hood, Moonshot creates its efficiency by shared components allowing smaller, more powerful servers to sit in the same chassis. At the end of the day, this has to create financial efficiencies, right? So it seems. Smaller datacenter footprint, more computing power, less power….I guess the Chinese proverb is true…less is more.
According to the panel of HP executives and product experts, HP Moonshot will be available on store shelves next month. Just kidding. They will be available next month through HP partners. As for the target market, HP Moonshot seems best suited for large business and data center service providers. SMB’s should be able to benefit from the efficiencies through lower compute utility costs.
The time was ripe for disruption
Driven by the IT challenges created by social, cloud, mobile and big data, the HP Moonshot system is a second-generation server from HP’s Project Moonshot. HP Moonshot seeks to address the impending sustainability crisis of traditional technology and servers. For example, by 2016, large cloud and web services will require 8-10 million servers. Using current technology, these data centers would span an area larger than the length of Manhattan!
Notes from the launch pad:
Built on chips more commonly found in smartphones and tablets, HP Moonshot servers are capable of delivering a high-density footprint, with reduced energy use and at a significantly lower cost. Occupying one-tenth of the space currently needed for traditional servers, HP Moonshot servers offer support for up to 1,800 servers per rack.
The HP Moonshot system consists of the HP Moonshot 1500 enclosure and HP ProLiant Moonshot servers, which will offer processors from multiple HP partners including AMD, AppliedMicro, Calxeda, Intel and Texas Instruments Incorporated, each targeting a specific workload.
HP Moonshot Stats:
89 percent less energy usage
80 percent less space required
77 percent decrease in cost
97 percent less complex, resulting in innovation that is three times as fast.
In addition, HP also announced an enhanced partner program and services, including:
· HP Pathfinder Innovation Ecosystem—includes nearly 25 silicon vendors, operating system developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) dedicated to the rapid development of new servers to support varied workloads.
· HP Moonshot Concierge Services—includes the HP Discovery Labs and HP Technology Services support and consulting solutions for platform migration and energy efficiency.
Oh, I almost forgot. My question was, "What operating systems will run on Moonshot?” The answer: Linux and Windows. Since the days of the first manned lunar landing until today, disruptions have defined generations. How will Moonshot and software defined computing reshape the way we process massive amounts of data?
Only history will remember and speak of this event with the greatest honesty and the headlines will travel the globe in nanoseconds – oh how times have changed. Until then, imagination, creativity and the need to see beyond infinity will continue to fuel innovation.
Some crime-fighting duos are legendary: Holmes and Watson, Batman and Robin, Crockett and Tubbs. This week at RSA HP unveiled what I think is a technology that will change the way organizations approach security and perhaps make security and big data the new dynamic duo.
First, in its 2012 Cyber Security Risk Report, HP details the current security landscape:
Total vulnerabilities are on the rise: Disclosures grew 19 percent from 6,844 in 2011 to 8,137 in 2012
Critical vulnerabilities declined, but still pose significant risk: They fell from 23 percent in 2011 to 20 percent in 2012. Less than 1 percent of URLs tested leverage standard mitigation after more than a decade
The rate of mobile vulnerabilities continues to increase rapidly: Mobile vulnerabilities rose 68 percent from 158 in 2011 to 266 in 2012. Also, 48 percent of mobile applications tested in 2012 gave unauthorized access
In response to this evolving security landscape which still poses challenging and potentially expensive threats to organizations, HP announced the formation of the HP Security Research (HPSR) organization, which will provide actionable security intelligence through published reports, threat briefings and enhancements to the HP security product portfolio. HPSR will lead HP’s security research agenda, leveraging HP DVLabs, HP Fortify Software Security Research and the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI).
HP has made good on its promise to make the best of its recent acquisitions, ArcSight and more importantly Autonomy, to address the changing security landscape. With HP’s new solutions, organizations can automatically apply sentiment analysis and event information to their Big Data and security event platforms by integrating the security information and event management (SIEM) capabilities of HP ArcSight with the HP Autonomy IDOL content analytics engine. This combination automatically recognizes the context, concepts, sentiments and usage patterns related to how users interact with all forms of data. With this tracking and analysis of human sentiments, organizations can identify threats that would have previously gone unnoticed.
I did get a chance to see these innovations as well as the upcoming Sentinel solution for network security on my recent trip to Palo Alto. There is a tremendous amount of energy and resources being applied to a) security and b) integrating cross BU innovations (FINALLY!). Oh and Meg isn’t fighting cyber crime alone. It was clear to me and others at the HP GPC in Las Vegas that she is surrounded by supporters, both internally and externally.
In addition, HP announced:
The new HP ArcSight Cloud Connector Framework, which collects application event and log data from cloud service providers, providing a real-time view into user activity and threat monitoring for on-premise and cloud applications.
The new HP ArcSight/Hadoop Integration Utility, a plug-in ready platform that integrates HP ArcSight 6.0c with Apache™ Hadoop™, speeding the process of digging through Big Data stores to quickly identify security attack trends.
HP Reputation Security Monitor (RepSM) 1.5, which leverages data from HPSR and enables clients to defend against sophisticated attacks by detecting dangerous interactions with ill-reputed sites to prevent a breach.
HP ArcSight Express 4.0, a solution for midmarket organizations which combines security information and event management (SIEM), log management, and user activity monitoring in an out-of-the-box solution, including connectors to HP ArcSight IdentityView and HP RepSM.
With data getting bigger by the day and security threats growing by the second, this new crime fighting dynamic duo is sure to be around for quite some time! So, who is your favorite crime fighting duo and what do you think about the combination of security and big data? Hype or happening?
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Some crime-fighting duos are legendary: Holmes and Watson, Batman and Robin, Crockett and Tubbs. This week at RSA HP unveiled what I think is a technology that will change the way organizations approach security and perhaps make security and big data the new dynamic duo. 
