- Rittal use pyrotechnics to demonstrate effectiveness of solution, while Dr Mike Lynch OBE lights up seminar theatre with opening keynote -

IP EXPO, 17 October 2012: The starting gun was fired at IP EXPO with a sold-out seminar by Autonomy founder, Dr Mike Lynch OBE and a series of product demos that included enclosure technology specialist, Rittal, setting a server alight to show the product working in an emergency.

Dr Lynch explored the changing balances in internal IT, how emerging technology makes winners and losers and those technologies unleashing new knowledge and creativity.

“We are seeing a major shift in enterprise IT,” said Dr Lynch. “The IT department is no longer in total control as the workforce moves towards the consumerisation of IT. For instance, employees are now trying to use their own devices for work and individual departments are commissioning cloud services without the knowledge of their colleagues in IT. Although a fundamental change for enterprise architecture and IT, this offers a great opportunity for innovation and competitive differentiation.”

In a UK first, Boston showed-off its ultra-low power ARM-based servers. Boston’s Viridis servers, based on Calxeda EnergyCore SoC (System on a Chip), bring a 10x reduction in energy costs compared with conventional servers.

Another keynote setting pulses racing was Lotus F1 IT Director, Graeme Hackland, who shared his team’s transition to cloud computing and how an agile data infrastructure helps win races.

Cloud is a major theme at the two-day event. In his keynote, Dr John Manley of HP Labs gave a high-speed exploration of the current and future shape of the cloud. On stand D72, IBM showcased its SmartCloud suite of products, which are a faster and even more cost-effective approach to the cloud.

Also in the cloud space, Chip PC Technologies, a global technology leader in thin client solutions for cloud and virtualization environments, launched its super powerful thin-client to the UK market, the HD PC W7DA8E6. Other product launches included Indigo Forward with its video endpoint monitoring and virtual meeting room solution.

Big Data also featured prominently. In their keynote, Doug Cutting, Cloudera’s Chief Architect and Mike Connaughton, Oracle EMEA Director of Big Data clarified how to combine big data and Hadoop for tangible business benefits.

Elsewhere at IP EXPO, an informative debate with Fusion-io CEO and founder, David A Flynn, examined how software defined platforms are replacing the need for proprietary hardware in the datacentre.

Another important IP EXPO area that saw product launches was Storage. Remote storage specialist Arkivum launched OSCAR (On-Site Cloud Archive), a revolutionary cloud archiving solution for organisations that need to store data onsite, during a series of on-stand seminars. Industry giant NetApp showcased its data ONTAP 8.1.1 storage operating system to promote its business objectives around an agile data infrastructure.

Proving very popular are the IP EXPO Labs, which offer hands-on experience in a range of cloud, virtualization and storage topics. In the vLab, sponsored by Veeam, delegates got to grips with virtualization, as well as shared knowledge with other IT professionals and received advice on how to improve business performance.

“It is great to see so many companies using IP EXPO as the launch pad for their latest technology,” says Hugh Keeble, managing director of IP EXPO organisers, Imago Techmedia. “IP EXPO has seen incredible growth and this year is looking to be our biggest event ever as more businesses realise the benefits of being able to view and experience IP solutions first-hand under one roof, as well as learning from experts and thought leaders, such as Mike Lynch.”

IP EXPO, the UK’s number one end-to-end IT infrastructure event, continues tomorrow, 18 October 2012. For more information, please visit www.ipexpo.co.uk.