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Off to HPE Discover: “It’s Vegas, baby – Vegas!”


If it is June and it’s very hot then it’s Las Vegas and time for HPE Discover – will we see you there? Follow me with hashtag #HPEinfluencer




Whether you head to Las Vegas for the entertainment or the restaurants, it matters little. It could be the attraction of the shows and concerts or the sporting events. No matter which way you look at it there is the ever present temptation to win big on the floor of the casino just as there is the temptation coming from a bar almost everywhere you turn. Yes, I’m writing about Vegas, baby – Vegas to quote a famous refrain from a popular movie (Vince Vaughn shouts this to Jon Favreau in the movie Swingers)! For the NonStop community this may not be truly the event of the year but for any party interested in knowing more about executing to a vision and delivering on product roadmaps that are all central to HPE’s strategy, this show is a must!

If you are reading this and the event is yet to start then you would be finding us somewhere out on the road between Colorado and Nevada. Once again we will be depending upon our company command center to get us to Las Vegas safely and if all goes to plan, we will be overnighting on a number of Walmart parking lots – west of the Mississippi this is the thing to do when you just want to cover lots of miles. Having said this, the one constant at this time of year is the heat – so once in Las Vegas we will be checking into the Venetian Hotel not only for its closeness to the exhibition floor and the meeting rooms but because of the superb A/C on hand.

The RV is only part of the story as it’s simply our choice of transportation into and out of Las Vegas. Yes, we like to drive and yes, we like our home on wheels when it comes to retiring for the night. But this year we are again guests of HPE as we join our fellow bloggers making up the HPE Influencers group. HPE does such a good job of getting us all close to the action – our coffee talks make this trip exciting all by themselves. And before I forget - a very big thanks this year to Laura Mackey who is putting this program together and making sure all our needs are being met.

I will be representing the bloggers focused on Mission Critical Systems – in particular, NonStop systems – but I will also be pursuing other product and service offerings of HPE. Who wouldn’t want to hear more about the upcoming acquisition of Cray and who wouldn’t want to see how Superdome Flex is developing? And yes, The Machine continues to evolve and with each event, HPE unveils just one more working piece of this dramatic change to the way we think of computing today. HPE Labs continues to be a highlight for me; expect to see plenty of photos from the exhibition hall as the event unfolds.

Have you been following the tweets coming from HPE? Have you seen some of the early promotional emails that have already begun in support of different presentations? Of course, Connect will be out in force and they have a program for the Connect user community and there will certainly be sessions provided for those members of the NonStop community who may be present – make sure you visit Connect booth as it’s not too far from where HPE houses the HPE Influencers and past experience suggests there is always a crowd hovering around the Connect booth and there is always quite a number of familiar faces and while I am not sure what NonStop systems will be on display, there is always one or two NonStop product managers nearby.

Talking of tweets – my handle is
@RichardKBuckle and from 2019 I am working hard to drive the number of followers I have past 2,000. Looking at the numbers of followers of my peers in the HPE Influencer group, there are half a dozen or so with thousands of followers so let’s make the NonStop community more visible. HPE will be broadcasting the tweets by the Influencers - follow #HPEinfluencer as well as the changed hashtag, #HPEDiscover) on Jumbotron screens erected throughout the center – exhibition hall and meeting spaces and wherever there are places to simply sit down and relax. If you have as yet not been to a HPE Discover event, the pace is fast and the atmosphere electric!

This will be my eighth or ninth HPE Discover event (counting 2017’s participation in HPE Discover, Madrid) – I can’t recall missing any since HP Discover 2011. Discover events, HP and HPE, follow three HP Technical Forum (HPTF) events that ran from 2008 through to 2010. At these HPTF events, there was still a semblance of user group engagement as they were the beginnings of a move to combine all of the then-HP user communities following the acquisition of Compaq, but no more. Like myself, a guest of HPE, so too is Connect a guest of HPE and no matter the size of its presence on the exhibition floor, NonStop presence at HPE Discover is still an opportunity to present the NonStop story to all and sundry!

I was posting about the 2010 HPTF event on June 11, 2010, Modernize? Evangelize! and I mused about the following year’s HP Discover 2011. Even as I had concerns about just how visible NonStop would be at an event as large as was being promised, it was left to Steve Saltwick, then of HP BCS/NED Marketing, who “finally convinced me of the value proposition. ‘Just think about it,’ I recall Steve advising, ‘this event in June will be the best opportunity we will have to impress on a much larger community the value that comes from using NonStop!’” Nothing has changed since Steve made that observation – HPE Discover continues to be a place where NonStop has an opportunity to impress a really big audience and my own presence, wearing as I do every NonStop badge and button I can find, in the HPE Influencer briefing sessions cannot be missed!

What will be the big items covered in this year’s event? Where will the focus be directed and in which organizations will the big announcements be generated? Already HPE CEO Antonio Neri has tweeted that there will be “Five advantages to be on the watch for: GreenLake pay-per-use innovation, InfoSight intelligent storage advantage, composable cloud, high-performance compute innovation, partnership and customer choice innovation.” Neri also told CRN reporter Steve Burke as you can read in a June 3, 2019, article
Antonio Neri: 5 Innovation Advantages To Look For At HPE Discover that, “You will be amazed at the innovation we are going to bring to Discover; more innovation in storage in terms of intelligent management platforms, more innovation in terms of edge with edge computing.” Neri also told Burke to expect that, “the biggest innovation you are going to hear from us is the pivot to as a service on everything we do.”

As Margo and I drive into Las Vegas we are expecting to feel the heat, as in the past, temperatures have routinely climber well above 100F mark and perhaps this is only appropriate when an event as important as HPE Discover is being held – and yes, members of the traditional press will be in attendance alongside us bloggers and I am hoping that Burke is nearby. It would be good to catch up for a chat with him and to hear of his observations about this year’s event. That too is one of the big reasons for attending HPE Discover – the networking opportunities are on a scale unlike any other event held during the year. There will be many stories coming “hot off the presses” I expect, but if you want to read of my own NonStop spin on all that is covered at HPE Discover then make sure you check back in to this site as I will be posting updates regularly throughout the week – yes, the heat from the nearby dessert is going to experience competition as HPE Discover certainly is going to be every bit as hot!

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