This time next week, HP will be putting the final touches and opening the onsite registration lines for HP Discover. Discover is HP’s annual trade show featuring the full breadth and depth of the HP product portfolio. This is also the final Discover before its separation into two companies, HP, Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, expected in November. HP holds another HP Discover event in Europe during December, so it will be interesting to see how the show is planned once it divides into two separate companies. But as for next week, Discover is always a rapid-fire week of information overload for attendees. It is a challenge to soak up as much as you can to bring back to your employers and I expect no difference this time around.
HP Discover is a chance to learn from experts in sessions, talk with experts on the show floor and network with other HP customers. It’s also a time to hear about direction from executives in the company, who speak to customers and partners together to let us know where the company is going strategically. Discover is used to show off the latest innovations, shiny new things and incremental advances. HP has been busy pushing out new releases and announcements ahead of Discover and there plenty more to come during the event.
I have been invited back to HP Discover by the HP social media group to attend the event as a blogger. Attending as a blogger always gives me a different view than most because we get a great chance to hear directly from executives and product managers about the latest releases and direction of their product lines. Highlights for me always include hearing from the HP storage team and from the ProLiant (aka Industry Standard Server) team. The software and cloud teams always come with challenging new concepts and releases – many of which push me out of my comfort zone, but also provide me with a rich set of ideas to bring back to my company.
I have also been invited to speak along side Kara McMillian, Sr. Product Manager for Storage Management on the Business Software Management team, about my experiences with the brand-new HP Storage Operations Manager (SOM) product. I tested evaluation releases of the SOM product in as HP developed a brand-new, heterogenous storage resource management software product. SOM is the next-generation product that aims to replace HP Storage Essentials, which I have been a long-time user. I’ve spoken along side of Kara and co-worker Inge DeMaere at several previous HP Discover events about the ways we have leveraged Storage Essentials in our enterprise. Please join us for our session, B1058 Introducing HP Storage Operations Manager, the evolution of Storage Resource Management, on Wednesday, June 3, at 11 am.
I’ll be blogging during the week as announcements are made and as I discover things at HP Discover. You may also follow @pbsellers on Twitter for instant updates and retweets from the event.
Disclaimer: HP has invited me and will be covering my costs to attend HP Discover. The offer does not allow any editorial control or direction to HP and the invitation does not have any requirements of me as a blogger. The views and opinions I choose to post are solely my own and are not controlled by HP. I am an HP customer through my primary employer and the level of coverage of this particular vendor is a direct reflection of that relationship and my hands-own experiences.
