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It’s showtime! Heading once again to Vegas …


HPE Discover 2018 is about to happen and we are all buckled-in for the drive to Vegas. What can we expect to see and hear - well, that’s for another post but for now, Margo and I look forward to seeing many of you once the  conference gets under way!

Time to wash the car, check that the bags all fit and in general, make sure nothing is taken for granted or left behind. This is Vegas week and it’s always highlighted on our calendar with bright red circles inked around the week. From the time when we participated in ITUG events to when the different user groups talked of merging to when Connect came into being – we have looked forward to making the trip to Las Vegas in summer when every instinct we have is to head the other way. To the ocean, or the lake! Why can’t we find a venue big enough in San Diego, for instance, far removed from the desert heat? And yet, as we contemplate the trip to come, it really doesn’t matter where HPE pitches its big tent, ultimately it’s the content that is important and an opportunity to hear HPE executives first hand is all the motivation required to wash the car and load the bags.

It’s been quite an eventful time during these last couple of weeks. A trip to Leipzig, Germany, for GTUG and the European NonStop HotSpot 2018/IT-Symposium 2018 - Conference & Exhibition followed by a headlong dash down to Dallas, Texas, for N2TUG before returning to Windsor, Colorado, to post about it all and then hitting the road once again for HPE Discover 2018, Las Vegas. What is a little unusual that this far into the year and it’s our first trip to Vegas? If you are a regular reader of posts to Real Time View, more often than not by the time HPE Discover rolls around, it’s usually our forth or even fifth trip of the year to Vegas, but not this time. Our business engagements have climbed to where time on the road isn’t treated lightly and priorities have to be reckoned with – in the lead up to our trip to Leipzig, we did manage to squeeze in a quick trip back to Palo Alto, but there was no time for side trips or planning a more circuitous route that might have led us to Vegas.

In the past we have always taken the company command center with us and then used the Vegas event to kick-on to other events and shows along the California coast. We have even combined the trip to Vegas for a weekend at either the road course at Willow Springs or Button Willow, but not this year as we have only a brief period back in the office before we do have to return to Palo Alto where NonStop product management is hosting a NonStop Partner Symposium and the timing couldn’t be better – what more meaningful exchange could there be with NonStop product management then after HPE has talked up the big picture of where it was headed? It’s always important to have strategically important announcements out in the open before drilling on down into NonStop and the contribution it is making in support of HPE’s strategy.

However, returning to Vegas and HPE Discover, once again I have to be thankful to HPE for extending to me an invite to be their guest and a part of the independent blogging community. Based on previous experiences HPE really does a great job in supporting bloggers and the program that HPE creates just for us always proves to be entertaining as it is enlightening. If my time with HPE in Madrid for last winter’s HPE Discover event is any indication of what to expect then I am really looking forward to catching up with colleagues I shared a meeting room with for almost a week.

This time, fortunately, I will be joined by Margo so the two of us are going to have a whole lot of fun even as there is so much serious content to absorb. HPE independent bloggers organizers, Becca and Laura, treat us royally so it should be fun for sure even as it most certainly will be intense. Looking forward, too, to catching up to with my kiwi mate, Alistair, who I only ever get to see at HPE Discover!

Clearly, the highlights for the NonStop community will center on virtualized NonStop running atop of VMware virtual machines. While running atop OpenStack with Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) caught our attention initially, support for a more commercially focused VM, as is the case with VMware, should grab a lot more mindshare – which enterprise doesn’t run VMware these days? And just as clearly, the highlight too should be about consuming NonStop any which way we like should be of interest to all attendees, whether running NonStop today or planning to in the near future. Yes, you read that right. There are enterprises that used to run NonStop that are looking to return to NonStop even as there are enterprise users that are looking at NonStop for the very first time.

The news of Microsoft buying GitHub is also a potential game changer for some enterprises who may not have considered NonStop in the past. “The impact to the NonStop customer community is that many of your approved technology lists include all of the Microsoft development product suite, which should now include GitHub Enterprise, and because it depends on it, git too,” wrote Randall Becker of Nexbridge in an article for the June issue of NonStop Insider. “This is a pretty big deal because git already runs on most platforms, including your NonStop.”

Don’t forget too that there will be even more coverage of progress that’s been made towards delivering The Machine. One panel session I don’t want to miss out on is The Machine project and Memory-Driven Computing: Powering tomorrow’s AI-driven enterprise. It is scheduled to be held in the Innovation Theater on June 20 between 1:30pm and 2:30pm and it’s going to be a panel session. Billed as an opportunity to hear from experts across HPE of their plans to power the hypercompetitive future, the list of participating HPE executives is impressive and includes some familiar faces - Kirk Bresniker, Hewlett Packard Labs Chief Architect and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Fellow, Vice President, HPE; Eng Lim Goh, PhD, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, HPC & AI, HPE; Randy Meyer, Vice President & General Manager, Mission-critical Servers, HPE.

Once I saw Randy was part of the panel then of course my interest was piqued but I have been talking to Kirk Bresniker for some time and I just know that what they will cover will be of interest for the NonStop community. There are always surprises at HPE Discover – will this panel session prove to be yet another one of HPE Discover’s famous surprises? What will not be a surprise is that HPE continues to pursue foundation technologies that will definitely put distance between what HPE Labs produces versus competing vendors who simply copy what others do and this is a byproduct of the new leadership within HPE that started several years ago and continues to ensure the future of HPE and along with it, the future of NonStop. Should be a great show and one well worth finding the time to attend!

There is still the ongoing stream of updates that continue to hit the news services concerning HPE’s pursuit of Mission Critical Distributed Ledger Technology (MCDLT) where the first platform supporting MCDLT – OK, blockchain – is NonStop. There will be demos and updates and that too is a priority for me. Attending the event will be OmniPayments’ Yash Kapadia and we plan to get together as OmniPayments is working with HPE’s MCDLT in support of solutions addressing today’s concerns about conforming to regulations about Knowing Your Customer (KYC). But I am certain that HPE will be addressing even more markets with MCDLT at HPE Discover and I am hopeful there will be more news on MCDLT in support of Supply Chain Management.

Driving out of the garage and onto the highway with our GPS directing us to Vegas isn’t anything unusual for us as its pretty much programmed in and ready any time we need it. Looking at upmarket stores for the latest in Dior, Prada and Louboutin will probably be a distraction as will one evening spent at Mastro’s steakhouse. But as distracting as these have proved in the past Margo and my focus will remain very much centered on HPE Discover and so this road trip, even with all its familiarity, will be something we enjoy.

Yes, shortly we will be on our way and we hope to see you and should you be on the floor of the exhibition hall then look for the booth housing the independent bloggers and stop by to say Hi! I will be only too happy to take time out to chat and even with everything covered above, one of the most important aspects of HPE Discover is networking so – let’s network! Safe travels! And see you soon!  

Comments

Bill Honaker said…
Be kind to Margo's new ride!

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