HP Discover Barcelona: What to expect & how to follow online this week

I am currently sitting in Myrtle Beach airport waiting for my first of three flights that will ultimate bring me to Barcelona, Spain.  I’ll be spending the next week attending HP Discover in Barcelona.  It is one of HP’s two major conferences each year and it will be first visit to HP Discover in Europe and on a personal note, my first trip to Europe in thirteen years.

So what to expect from HP Discover?

Some of the usual highlights are expected – the keynote from CEO Meg Whitman to address customers directly and general sessions for HP executives to unpack their vision and product lines for customers and highlight some of the successes the company is achieving.  There will be hundreds of breakout sessions for onsite attendees.  The Discovery Zone is the place to visit with hundreds of HP’s top technical staff available to answer questions and explain solutions in detail.  Unlike other conferences, HP staffs not just marketing folks in the booth, but also engineers and developers.  But if you’re not onsite, keep reading – you can still follow the conference.

What else is expected?

Storage: Last year’s HP Discover brought major news with the introduction of the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7000 series arrays.  These ‘baby’ 3PAR arrays have been a big hit in the mid-market storage marketplace.  Their introduction converted me and my employer into HP 3PAR users.  I’ll be interested to hear what’s new in 3PAR.  In June at Discover, HP announced the 3PAR StoreServ 7450 array – an all flash variant of the already successful 3PAR StoreServ 7400.  But HP 3PAR is just part of the HP Storage story – and there will likely be other things going on around software-defined storage during the week.

Systems: HP created the HP Converged Systems group in May.  This August, during VMworld, HP held a reception for bloggers and media where we were briefed by the newly formed group and the Converged Systems group is responsible for full system solutions made out of HP intellectual property, similar to VirtualSystem, CloudSystem and AppSystem solutions we’ve seen delivered to date.  This will be their first chance to show fruit during the week.

Servers: HP Servers group was also announced in May as HP combined its Business Critical and Industry Standard Server groups.  It will also be the first show for this group since their combination this year, since June’s HP Discover happened immediately after the announcement.  In previous years, there have been a lot of bleedover between Business Critical and Industry Standard, back and forth.   From the industry standard server side, HP ProLiant Gen8 continues to roll out models to complete its refresh cycle and some ProLiants are now in their second revision.  HP Discover in June brought the announcement of the HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 which I have since had a chance to review in depth.  Excited to see what’s new here…

Mobile: I’m also interested to see what more HP is doing in the mobile space.  In the past year, HP has been toying with Android based hardware, Windows 8 based tablets and has other groups working on enterprise mobility solutions.  One solution that I saw in June – called HP Anywhere – was in a early beta form.  It allowed developers to have a secure platform and SDK for developing rich HTML5 applications for Enterprise.  Mobile is a growing space and I am curious what HP has been developing in this space to help enterprise retain control of data, secure and enable users.

But I’m not there – how can I participate?

I know most people who read Techazine will not be on-site at HP Discover Barcelona.  But, that doesn’t mean you can’t participate.  Here are some opportunities for the next week for your to participate online:

1. HP Storage Press Event – Monday, 9am EST – http://hpstorage.me/1buyzV4  – Register online and attend for free to watch the announcements from HP Storage live.
2. HP Discover Opening Keynote featuring Meg Whitman, CEO, and Bill Veghte, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Group – Tuesday, 8am EST – http://bit.ly/1bQrhNz
3. HP Discover General Session featuring George Kadifa, Executive Vice President, HP Software; Mike Nefkens, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Services; and Dion Weisler, Executive Vice President, Printing and Personal Systems – Wednesday, 8am EST – http://bit.ly/1aLQfr9
4. Live and on-demand videos all throughout the week on a variety of topics – http://bit.ly/1fa5lf3
5. On Twitter, follow hashtag #HPDiscover
6. Follow @HPStorageGuy – Calvin Zito’s HP Discover Barca Bloggers list on Twitter – https://twitter.com/HPStorageGuy/lists/discover-barca-bloggers and talk with us – ask questions and interact.

Hope to hear from you!