Reflections on Dell Technologies World 2018

It’s been a long time since my last blog post that I felt it was time to put some thoughts down on my recent trip to Dell Technologies World. I don’t always get a chance to reflect on long, exhausting and informative events but this year was a different year and I wanted to focus on the 1st Dell Technologies World.

The Main Event

Vegas is always a tricky place for the UK customer base to get to but for those that went I’m sure they have some good insightful memories and great stories to tell.

This year was different for me as I was honoured to have the task of helping out with a unique programme in the UK delivering a bespoke customer track for delegates that wanted to do something a little different and more tailored. Thankfully I wasn’t on my own and had the support of a good colleague and a great marketing team.

For me, the message came alive when it was clear that this was a less product centric event and more of a customer transformation event with future looking visionaries invited to talk about how they see the adoption of AI and IoT in the work place. Stories of companies turning fiction into fact is what really draws customers in. It was clear that this direction creates impactful messages and I was happy to see that the keynotes were focused on this higher level talk track.

The Social Village was perfectly staged with plenty of spots to relax and watch The Cube interviews or simply try and do some drone racing with some awesome looking VR headsets.

The expo floor was an abundance of vendors all offering something different from Microsoft to McLaren to even a few stands selling laptop bags. I think it was a good mix allowing attendees to feel it wasn’t just Dell centric but they had a pick of many partners.

Products…products…products

It wouldn’t have been a show without some major announcement and the major one that was top of mind was the next generation in all flash array – The Powermax. Built on the solid base of VMAX engineering this really is the next generation storage array. I hear Tier 0 mentioned now and again and it’s hard to fathom what you’d use the array for but think of real time analytics, next generation computational sequences, AI and high demanding workloads. The introduction of end to end NVMe is a major game changer and the new SCM drives that come out later in the year will make this one heavyweight champion in the storage world. Certainly one that cannot be knocked out for the the title belt. If you want to find out more, head on over to the product overview – Right here

Customer community

This really was a bit different this year especially as traditionally there was no real community champion track similar to the vExpert or Cisco champion programme. It was good to see UK customers interacting and sharing knowledge and ideas with one another which makes a difference to vendors pitching products. I think having this on a global level would make it more appealing to new customers to engage with one another. I’m all about community and empowering our users to talk with one another so was very proud that some of the work I was helping with elevated the conversation to individuals sharing their personal war stories. Long may it continue !!

Wrap Up

I took away a lot of good memories and it was good to see friends and colleagues from other countries. The best moment was meeting 3 colleagues from Lebanon, Denver and Nashville who I met almost 3 years ago at bootcamp in Boston. Keeping friends and acquaintances in this industry is paramount for me and so I’d encourage everyone to keep their network alive and growing.

In my eyes, what seemed like a long and draining week was an immense success especially to all the UK partners and customers that felt the energy and got to converse with execs in the business along with watching Sting perform live. It’s an event that everyone has something to learn from or gain a new bit of knowledge and I’d encourage anyone to attend. Here’s to 2019…..

 

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