Storage Field Day 1 – Silicon Valley

I’ve been organizing Tech Field Day events for three years, and I’ve been in enterprise storage for far longer. So it’s kind of surprising to realize that I’ve never hosted a Field Day focused on enterprise storage! That changes this month, with Storage Field Day on April 26 and 27. The delegates and presenters are all in order, and it’s really an amazing event.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve invited a huge variety of storage focused companies to come to previous Tech Field Day events, including familiar names like EMC, NetApp, Compellent, 3PAR, HP, Dell, Drobo and many more. And we’ve seen a large number of storage startups at Tech Field Day, including Nimble, Zerto, Druva, and more. But we’ve never had an event focused entirely on storage!

Storage Field Day has an amazing lineup of presenters, with a special focus on disruptive market entrants. We will start off on Thursday with Kaminario, followed by Nimbus Data. After lunch, we will return to Drobo before heading to a meeting with Coraid. Thursday evening, Quest Software is sponsoring our party, and gets their own short presentation just prior.

The Hiller Aviation Museum looks like a very cool place for a party!

Continuing our tradition of locating interesting party facilities, our tech field day party will be held at the Hiller Aviation Museum. The place looks amazing, reminding me quite a bit of the Museum of Flight we visited in Seattle. It is interesting to note that many IT geeks are also “into” cars and planes, explaining last month’s visit to Club Auto Sport.

The Hiller is rolling out their Flight Sim Zone for us, and will have the museum gallery open as well. We’ve also got an open bar and buffet, as usual. If you are in the area and would like to attend the party, drop me a line. Space is extremely tight, but I might be able to fit in a few extra folks.

We begin Friday’s presentations with updates from Dell and Brocade. After lunch, we would head off to Tintri before finishing up at Pure Storage.

On the delegate side, we’ve got lots of great folks. Returning are Scott D. Lowe, Derek Schauland, Chris Evans, Howard Marks, Fabio Rapposelli, Robin Harris, Nigel Poulton, and Robert Novak. And we’ve got some newbies, too: Hans Deleenheer and Ray Lucchesi.

As with all Tech Field Day events lately, the entire content will be streamed live online at the Tech Field Day website. Head over there on Thursday and Friday to watch the presentations and the delegate discussion. You are also welcome to participate online using the #SFD1 hash tag on Twitter.

This schedule is unbelievably packed, but it’s the best we could do. There was just way too much interest in Storage Field Day! I have mixed feelings about having to turn away more companies than I can accept at the event, and hope that this enthusiasm translates into a successful Storage Field Day 2 later in the year! Let’s just hope everyone signs up earlier this time so I don’t have to turn them away.

Of course, we’ve also got the Solid-State Storage Symposium the same week, and I urge you to consider attending that event. Free tickets are available now, and the presenter lineup there is equally impressive!