IT managers and CIOs will be treated to a rare series of head-to-head, presidential-style vendor debates between the likes of HP and IBM, and Brocade and Cisco at the forthcoming Implementing Information Infrastructure Symposium (IIIS) to be held in Sydney during August.
The event, hosted by Computerworld Australia and the Storage Networking Industry Association Australia (SNIA), will also feature Dell and Hitachi Data Systems facing off on alternate visions of virtualisation, and EMC, NetApp and Symantec on their journeys to the Cloud.
According to debate moderator and IBRS analyst, Kevin McIsaac, the debates will offer a unique opportunity to gain insight into competing vendor strategies as well as provide audience access to senior executives.
“A mass market event where a vendor stands up and speaks doesn’t have the appeal it had 15 years ago; the industry has moved on,” McIsaac said. “What we have constructed here is very different and is about interaction.
“The vendors will have a presidential-style debate and put forward their vision on each topic. After that we’ll sit them down at a panel and will get questions and feedback from the floor and stimulate a real debate — the sort of thing you just don’t get on the internet.
“Part of the value is being part of a debate with your peers — not just hearing two opposing vendors’ positions but being able to ask a question of them simultaneously and seeing how they both respond, and hearing what your peers are interested in.”
McIsaac said that another highlights of the IIIS event would be the opportunity to gain clarity about an often used — and abused — term: Cloud.
“What we’ll hear from these vendors is exactly what is this ‘journey to the Cloud’? What are these new capabilities — not the product — people can get through the Cloud, and how do I get there?” he said. “How do you reinvent your organisation, your infrastructure, and your staff and get there in the next two to three years?”
The Implementing Information Infrastructure Symposium is being held on 2 - 3 August 2011 at the Hilton, Sydney.