Interop 2014 (or High School Reunion #15!)
“This is awesome – I didn’t know something like this was even available!”
“You mean, we could get rid of maintenance windows for our SQL Servers?!”
These are my two favorite quotes from our discussion with IT heroes this week at Interop. I started going to this trade show back in 1991, so I always have fun seeing colleagues from my days as a journalist, my analyst time at META, and the great teams I’ve worked with at fun start-ups along the way. But in all my years going to Interop, I’ve never had such a unique story to tell on the trade show floor.
In the past, my story has also been why my company’s wireless/WAN optimization/switching technology is better than anyone else’s – and I’ve loved that I’ve always had very differentiated technology to pitch.
But ScaleArc is different – because this type of software is a whole new product category. So instead of “why you” we got questions like “Instant Database Scalability – what does that mean? How does it work? What do I get with that?” Distilling sophisticated software and a broad value prop down into 10 seconds is both challenging and fun.
We talked about getting better application uptime and higher database capacity, including zero-downtime patching, with no changes to your applications. Given Interop’s broad IT audience, these issues impact only a subset of attendees. But when we hit network architects, dev ops staff, and infrastructure managers, we had some great conversations. They all want to scale up and out without hassling the application folks, and zero-downtime patching hits a big chord.
What else was big? Cloud and virtualization were all the rage, as businesses of all stripes struggle to maintain agility while lowering costs and keeping pace with growth. ScaleArc’s ability to aid in cloud migration while helping applications deliver continuous availability fits right in – not just at Interop but across IT shops of all types.
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