Next week I’ll be attending Storage Field Day 19. As you probably already know this event is part of the Tech Field Day, an innovative series of traveling events in which IT vendors present their technology to twelve influencers in an interactive live-streaming session that is later added to the TFD’s YouTube channel. It’s an exciting event, usually packed with the latest industry news, great technology insights and helps me to stay in touch with other influencers while getting the chance to spot new trends.
Vendor line-up for next week is really interesting, pulling together established vendors, startups and more.
Here a quick round-up of the presenters with a short comment and links to get an idea of what to expect:
Dell EMC
Dell will have three sessions at SFD, presenting an update on Isilon (a scale-out NAS system), a session on PowerOne (an innovative all-in-one system that promises to dramatically automate and simplify infrastructure operations) and a third session on DevOps. This is an important year for Dell EMC which is in the process of integrating and rationalizing its product line-up through the creation of new products that will inherit the best technology and features from existing ones. For some hints on the overall Dell EMC strategy and what we have to expect from them in 2020, listen to this Voices in Data Storage podcast episode I recorded last year with Pierluca Chiodelli, VP of Product Management at Dell.
Infrascale
Unfortunately, I have yet to meet them but what better occasion than SFD to connect with a vendor? Browsing their website, they have solutions for DR-aaS and Backup-aaS, which is a very hot topic among enterprises of all sizes. For many organizations, data protection and DR are the first cloud services they actually use. I’m really curious to know more about what they do and how.
Komprise
Komprise is part of a group of startups that propose innovative solutions to pressing challenges that every organization is facing, and I’ve been following them closely for quite some time now: data growth and data management. I mentioned their solution in some of my GigaOm reports last year. Here is an example. I’m pretty curious to hear the latest from them.
Minio
This company is pioneering in the field of high-performance object stores. A new category of object stores that associate high speed, scalability, and some neat features for big data, HPC and AI workloads. A good replacement for some scale-out file systems while keeping the advantages and accessibility of S3-compatible object stores. I mentioned them in my latest report about object storage: Key Criteria for Evaluating Enterprise Object Storage. I’m pretty sure this will be a must-watch session.
NetApp
NetApp is one of the first storage vendors to really understand the cloud and change to provide their technology on as many platforms as possible, envisioning what they call Data Fabric. I’m pretty positive about their overall strategy and, usually, their TFD presentations are really enjoyable. Here a link to an article I wrote about NetApp Fabric Orchestrator after TFD20. Let’s see what else they have prepared for us!
Tiger Technology
Another new company for me and a new presenter for SFD as well. I’m doing some homework to understand what they do by digging on their website and reading some of the documentation I found online. I’m pretty curious now to learn and understand more about their technology and business model, and I’m pretty sure I’ll have something to share with you after their session.
Weka.IO
A startup working with the latest flash and cloud technology that provides a high-performance scale-out storage system. Impressive performance and scalability that already demonstrated their technology several times at TFD events. I recorded a podcast not a long ago with Liran Zvibal (CEO and co-founder) in which we talked about the challenges of having reliable high-performance file storage in the cloud and how is company addresses this kind of problematics. Also, in this case, I’m pretty sure they will have some great news to share with us.
Western Digital
WD usually has some pretty neat technology to show us, and they can go very deep on the technical details making the session always very informative and educative. They are one of the biggest flash memory and HDDs suppliers, and they partner with practically everybody in this industry. Their sessions are always a must watch to get an idea of the future of the storage industry. For example, last year I recorded a podcast with them about zoned storage, a pretty cool technology that could be soon part of many flash and disk devices. Here the link to the episode.
And more
We will also have a “secret company” presenting. I do not really know anything about it yet, but usually, these sessions are always worth a watch.
Closing the Circle
This event is packed with great sessions, it will be streamed live on TechFieldDay.com, and you can chime in by using the hashtag #SFD19 on twitter. If you can make it, the sessions will be uploaded on YouTube shortly after the live event.
On my side I’ll try to cover as much as I can, record videos, podcasts and also write articles that you’ll find here on GigaOm.
Disclaimer: I was invited to Storage Field Day 19 by GestaltIT and they paid for travel and accommodation, I have not been compensated for my time and am not obliged to blog. Furthermore, the content is not reviewed, approved or edited by any other person than the GigaOm team. Some of the vendors mentioned in this article are GigaOm clients.