Can you believe that the Dell Storage Forum is less than a week away? There have already been some great posts about what to expect, like this one from the Dell Tech Center. You can find full schedule details on the Dell Storage Forum microsite. This post is to help you get ready for the social activities, whether you are coming to Orlando or if you weren’t able to make it this time.
The Fluid Blogger’s Lounge will be open Monday thru Thursday – officially right after the general sessions till 6 (except Monday). You don’t have to be a blogger to get in, you just need to be active in social media. The idea is to give you a place to recharge your machines, hook into ethernet for uploading videos/images, and to reconnect with others in the Dell Storage community.We won’t have an official sign-up sheet, we are fluid, after all . We will have a sign-in board for everyone to tag the first time they visit. No fancy beverages, but we will have water and sodas. Please come by and connect with the community!
Silicon Angle’s Cube TV will be broadcasting live interviews from the Forum Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. This is sort of like ESPN for tech conferences, we’ll be bringing in executives, partners, customers, and storage experts for interviews, in many cases immediately after they have given presentations. It makes for vibrant, interesting internet TV.You can access the live feed at http://www.justin.tv/siliconangletv.
If you will be in Orlando, please sign up for the Dell Storage Forum tweetup. It will be at Ragland Road, an Irish Pub in Downtown Disney. You’ll need a ticket, sign up quick – there are only 33 tickets left!The Infosmack Podcast team will be there, recording their podcast for the Dell Storage Forum. It should be a great time.
Darren Thomas, VP and GM of Dell Enterprise Storage, and Phil Soran, President, Dell Compellent, will share what’s new and what’s next for the Dell Fluid Data architecture during the Tuesday morning keynote.Here’s how to connect so you can hear the keynote live:
We will be hosting #SANchat live from the Fluid Blogger’s Lounge. If you are in Orlando, stop by and join in. If you are not in Orlando, all you need to do if you want to participate is sign into Twitter, and watch for and respond to the #SANchat hashtag. We recommend using Tweetchat.Here are the details for June’s #SANchat:
As you can see, the social calendar is packed! Please connect with us, let’s grow this Dell Storage Community!
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Since Dell Storage Forum is next week, I thought we’d take a little trip down memory lane with some of the highlights from last year! For the lucky ones that are going this year, be sure to catch up with Lance (@ iSCSIKing ) and myself (@ DennisMSmith ) along with other members of the Dell team while you’re there. However, if you are not able to make the trip we will be providing non-stop coverage of the event through Twitter and Facebook so be sure to keep your eyes open for that. If you want to set up a twitter search for Dell Storage Forum, the official hash tag is #DellSF11. You can also find more information from Gina Rosenthal’s (@ Gminks ) blog she posted earlier .
Be sure to check back next week for our newest video of the week.
[View:www.youtube.com/watch]
I'm writing this from the Dell Storage Forum Fluid Blogger's Lounge. We still have some set up to do - the hotel IT guys are here right now setting up some ethernet drops for us. We should be ready to rock and roll tomorrow morning!
I thought I'd take a minute to share some of the great posts folks have made as they are getting ready to come outo Orlando, and then let y'all know what we'll be doing today, on the official Day 1 of the Dell Storage Forum.
Preview Reviews
Lance from the Dell Tech Center got ready by looking back at last year's Dell Storage Forum .
I talked about the social media plans for the Storage Forum, the Tweet of the Day contest , and plans for # SANchat live on Wednesday .
Jonathan Franconi aka @s1xth has a pre-show post , and has a #dellsf11 image gallery started on his blog.
Roger Lund aka @rogerlund helped educate the community pre-show on EqualLogic and Compellent basics...I may need to introduce him to some of the Dell PowerEdge folks who are here this week though!
The @infosmack crew had one of the first pre Dell Storage Forum posts
@stu of Silicon Angle has a post about their Cube TV appearance
Let me know if I missed your post!
Events on-deck for Day 1 - June 5
If you are here at the Dell Storage Forum today, you are here for training. Tonight from 6 - 9 is the Fluid Fix welcome reception at the House of Blues in Downtown Disney (don't forget your badge!).
New events and general reminders
Storagebeers is Monday night, not to be confused with the #dsftweetup Tuesday night. No excuse for not getting out and being social - IRL!
The official hashtag is #dellsf11 :)
If you have a blog post, feel free to share on our Facebook Fan page .
Discussions regarding
Dell’s solutions strategy have increased recently. It started at the Sanford Bernstein Strategic Decisions
Conference , Michael Dell discussed Dell's shift away from PCs . Those discussions
continued last week with Dell activities at the Cloud Expo in
New York and the Dell Storage Forum .
Dell’s solution
strategy is about combining our hardware
heritage along with enterprise technology we have been building over the last
few years via acquisitions. Feedback from media and analysts who joined us at the Dell storage forum
illustrates that point. In his Network Computing article , here’s what Steve Wexler had to say:
“These types of scalable solutions will be the
norm over time in the enterprise, and here we have Dell as one of the vendors
leading the way. Did we ever think we’d say that about Dell storage?”
There’s strong
evidence the strategy is working, starting with our Q4 and year-end results for FY11 . That momentum continued into our Q1 results for FY12 which happened last month. Among the
highlights in Q1: revenue from Enterprise Solutions and Services grew 5% year
over ear to $4.4 billion. We launched vStart, which allows us to deliver
fully pre-configured virtual machines. Dell-owned intellectual property (IP) from storage technology including Compellent , EqualLogic , PowerVault and DX Object Storage grew revenue 11% year over year. Moving
forward, we’ll continue efforts to drive even more revenue through Dell-owned
IP.
We’re also making
investments to enhance our technology solutions capability. In April, we
announced a $1B FY12 investment in technology solutions and services. These investments will result
in building out next-generation cloud data centers, and the expansion of Dell
Global Solution Centers to help customers architect, validate and build
solutions that power their businesses. Earlier this week, we opened our first Solution Center in Limerick, Ireland.
Additionally, we’re
investing heavily to train and rewire our sales force to deliver
customer-centric solutions, that expand across our product sect, to help our
customers increase IT efficiency. For instance, our Intelligent Data Management solutions help customers increase the value of stored
content by providing them with efficient, intelligent and automated storage,
data and decision management.
What do these kinds of
changes mean to Dell moving forward?
In comparison to our
past, today’s Dell has evolved from a PC manufacturer to a true IT solutions
partner – one that offers a differentiated view of the enterprise. Much of
Dell’s growth today is being driven from the commercial side of Dell’s business
where about 80% of Dell’s revenue comes from.
Compared to the
competition Dell’s strategy is all about providing open, capable and
affordable solutions and services to global business customers of all
sizes.
We’re committed to
building out our solutions strategy, with many of the pieces already in place. We’ll
continue our efforts to build more capabilities around services, technology and
storage to meet the needs of our customers. For long term success, I think a
lot of people here understand that strategy is key—and so is execution.
I've been holding off on doing my wrap-up post of the Dell Storage Forum because I wanted to wait until other folks finished posting about their conference take-aways. But you people are maniacs -- the content just keeps rolling in! :) I give up, here's my wrap-up. If I miss something you posted, or if you post something after this goes live (ahem Mr. Lund...), please add a comment with your link!
Fluid data architecture
The theme of the conference was Dell's fluid data architecture. Everywhere you looked you could see the fluid influence.
Every one of the b ig releases at the conference where about solidifying this architecture .
Folks in Orlando told us what fluid means to them in this video .
Where to find more information
There are still lots of tweets coming through on the #dellsf11 hashtag , and mentioning the @dellsf twitter account. You may want to follow the Twitter list from the event, to keep up with the community's influencers. We've been posting all of the great content that you guys have been posting on the Dell Storage Facebook Fan Page . There are some great pictures and videos on the Dell Flickr account .
Here are blog posts and other content generated from the Dell Storage Forum:
Dell Tech Center : one | two | three
Inside Enterprise IT: one | two | three | four | five
Dell Shares: one
Wikibon : This page lists all of the videos of interviews that were streamed live from the conference, as well as a list of blog posts created by wikibon during the conference.
Infosmack: Podcast recorded live at the Dell storage forum tweetup
Virtualization Buster: one | two | three
Fabio Rapposelli: one
Roger Lund's IT and VMware/Virtualization blog: one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten | eleven | twelve | YouTube channel
Breathing Data: one
A Technologists Corner: one | two
George Crump: one | two | three | four
The VAR guy : one | two | three | four
Infotech PR : youtube video
Clause EGGE: one
Emulex: Session presentation (slideshare)