One of the first sessions from the HP StorageWorks Tech Day this week was from Tom Joyce who is the newly appointed Vice President of StorageWorks Marketing at HP.  Tom has a lengthy background in the storage industry, with him working for a number of years at HP’s storage competitor, EMC.

In this informative 50 minute session Tom discusses HP’s intention to lead the storage space by “shaking this thing up” and how HP will be taking their competitors head-on, which is more aggressive in its messaging than we’ve traditionally seen with HP.  Converged infrastructure, as would be expected, was also a key theme. 

He acknowledged many of the challenges facing HP’s StorageWorks in particular HP’s own messaging around storage which hasn’t always been the clearest, which is an issue that I have always felt that HP had struggled with, ie: lots of products but they can’t seem to always piece them together. 

Speaking of ease, making storage simple was also an area that was highlighted as being one of importance for HP moving forward.  There were some good questions from blogger, Chris Evans (@chrismevans) particularly around there currently being little to no consolidation for the management of HP’s different storage systems.

This video is well worth watching if you are a storage customer of HP or are generally interested in enterprise storage.

So it will be interesting to see how and when the key areas of change outlined in this session start to make their way through to HP StorageWorks customers.  HP’s main storage competitors, EMC and NetApp in the meantime will definitely keep HP on their toes especially in this time of considerable technological change in the storage industry.

Disclaimer:  HP have covered my flight, accommodation and some food costs for attending this event. 

Ahead of today’s HP StorageWorks Tech Day I had the opportunity to speak with HP’s Storage aficionado Calvin Zito (@HPStorageGuy) about his thoughts on the Tech day event and his reasons behind the timing of this latest StorageWorks Tech Day, and what we can expect to hear about.  We also briefly discuss Tom Joyce, HP’s new VP of StorageWorks marketing and Dave Donatelli, the Executive VP of the  Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking group.

As Calvin mentions things appear to be somewhat shifting in the storage space and this certainly seems to be the case with Friday’s Register article that reports EMC converging their CLARiiON and Celerra storage products into an interesting new highly scalable product called V-CX. 

I wonder what HP have up their sleeve with their MSA, LeftHand, EVA, IBRIX and XP storage range and if/when we will see them provide the ability to run multiple array ‘personalities’ (ie: filer + SAN) on a single storage framework?  Can this or something similar be on HP’s ‘convergence’ roadmap?

Don’t forget you can follow this day and a half HP StorageWorks Tech Day event on Twitter with the hash tag #hpstorageday.  Also, forward on any queries or feedback you may have for the HP StorageWorks executives and engineering teams.

This Monday (29th March) sees HP holding an HP StorageWorks Tech Day for a group of invited bloggers, the intention of which is to provide an insight into what HP are currently doing around their StorageWorks range of products.  Last year’s StorageWorks Tech Day proved to be highly successful, with HP engaging with both the blogging community and the far reaching array of readers of the attending bloggers posts.

I have said it before and to some degree still maintain that HP have a very strong portfolio of storage products though historically haven’t always been the best in getting the word out to the masses about what they can offer businesses in the way of products and their features.  Events such as this Tech Day can really help open these channels of communication via the vehicle which is social media, here readers of the attending blogger’s sites can find out more about what HP are doing around their StorageWorks suite of products, where they are heading with regard to upcoming technologies and any non-NDA product roadmaps or release details.

The key to this event being successful in my opinion sits with the attending bloggers as much as HP, as it is their responsibility to provide their readers with an objective opinion or view on the information which is passed on by HP during this event.  This should include relaying relevant information that the blogger feels may be of use to their readers, but shouldn’t be afraid to point out any perceived limitations or shortcomings if necessary, after all not everything is perfect!

Also, from my experience with attending the previous HP StorageWorks Tech Day I have found HP, especially the engineers, hungry for feedback (good or bad) on the their products as almost all of the bloggers have had considerable real-world industry experience working with HP and competing products.  The real icing on the cake for me is also the ability to provide questions and feedback to HP during this event from my readers of TechHead and followers on Twitter (@kiwi_si).

It is an intensive day and a half event which will cover many aspects of HP’s StorageWorks offerings with presentations from HP storage executives and engineers.  There will also be a session from Paul Perez the Vice President and Chief Technologist of the HP StorageWorks division in which he will no doubt talk about where he sees the direction of the storage industry and particularly HPs StorageWorks product line heading.

No HP StorageWorks Tech Day event would be complete without knowing that the HP Storage Guy himself, Calvin Zito (@HPStorageGuy) will be attending, and along with the other bloggers will be providing regular updates from the event.  As Calvin mentions on his blog here, the HP StorageWorks executives and engineers will be covering the following topics (to name a few) over the course of the Tech Day:

• How does StorageWorks fit into the HP Converged Infrastructure?
• Where is technology going and how will HP take advantage of that?  Our CTO Paul Perez presented at the recent BladeSystem Tech Day will give this presentation and I’m really looking forward to him having a bigger time slice to talk technology futures. 
• Demos and technical discussions on several of our key products
• Tours of our product labs in Houston

It will no doubt prove be an intensive ride into the world of HP StorageWorks over the day and half from which I intend to post about the topics that I think you, my valued readers, will find the most relevant and interesting.  Please take this opportunity to forward onto me any HP StorageWorks (eg: MSA, EVA, LeftHand, etc) questions or feedback you may have.  I will endeavour to ask your question/feedback on your behalf and will let you know HP’s reply on the blog for others to also benefit from – so get those questions coming in TechHeads ! 

Why not follow the event on Twitter using the hash tag, #hpstorageday.

Here is a list of the attending bloggers – follow them on Twitter or via their blogs:

Rich Brambley Twitter: @rbrambley Web: http://vmetc.com	Chris Evans Twitter: @chrismevans Web:http://www.thestoragearchitect.com
Rodney Haywood Twitter: @rodos Web: http://rodos.haywood.org	John Obeto Twitter: @JohnObeto Web: http://absolutevista.com
Devang Panchigar Twitter: @StorageNerve Web: http://storagenerve.com	Brad Sams Twitter: @bdsams Web: http://www.neowin.net
Simon Seagrave Twitter: @kiwi_Si Web: http://www.techhead.co.uk	Rick Vanover Twitter: @rickvanover http://rickvanover.com
Kirby Wadsworth Twitter: @AceSage http://www.storagesanity.com

Hope you find my updates insightful and of use and don’t forget to get in touch with any StorageWorks related questions.