Storage Switzerland is at re:Invent 2013, Amazon Web Services’ global customer and partner conference in Las Vegas. The completely sold out event features over 175 technical sessions, training bootcamps, hands-on labs, and a hackathon. Why is Storage Switzerland covering re:Invent? Because storage is playing a key role in both the expansion of cloud services and cloud services are changing the way on-premise storage is deployed.
There are sessions on leveraging Amazon’s service to improve the backup process, how to reduce return to operation (RTO) windows and how to use it to augment primary storage. In addition, there is an amazing array of storage vendors here whom we will be sitting down with for briefings. Check in with Storage Switzerland often to get a unique look at the event from a storage perspective. Whether you are using Amazon or not, the technologies announced at this event may change the way you view storage.
Day 1 – Cloud First Initiatives
One of the surprising take aways from the event is the number of very large enterprises (Fortune 15) that indicated what they called a “Cloud First” initiative. This means that all new projects (applications, storage or data protection) are looked at from a cloud perspective first. If an application, new storage requirement or data protection need can be fulfilled by the cloud, these organizations are mandating to use cloud services first. As one major pharmaceutical company stated, “We are in the medicine business not the data center business”.
While most organizations are not showing that level of commitment to the cloud, it is clear that many are looking for ways to leverage the cloud to augment what they do. Hybrid cloud seems to be the top request and a key capability of many of the vendors.
Again, check back in frequently to learn more about Amazon re:Invent and how it may alter your storage and data protection strategies for next year.
George Crump is the Chief Marketing Officer at VergeIO, the leader in Ultraconverged Infrastructure. Prior to VergeIO he was Chief Product Strategist at StorONE. Before assuming roles with innovative technology vendors, George spent almost 14 years as the founder and lead analyst at Storage Switzerland. In his spare time, he continues to write blogs on Storage Switzerland to educate IT professionals on all aspects of data center storage. He is the primary contributor to Storage Switzerland and is a heavily sought-after public speaker. With over 30 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS, SAN, Virtualization, Cloud, and Enterprise Flash. Before founding Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest storage integrators, where he was in charge of technology testing, integration, and product selection.
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