Powering the Cloud celebrates in style

Angel Business Communications, organisers of the Powering the Cloud events, along with their partner SNIA Europe, have released attendee figures for 2013 and once again the two-day conferences proved a resounding success with 1,261 quality delegates (end users, resellers, consultants, press, bloggers and analysts) in attendance – an increase of 4% compared with last year’s figures. European storage, virtualisation and data centre technology professionals descended on Frankfurt to learn about the latest technological developments, exchange ideas and experiences and network with industry experts, vendors and peers. The agenda boasted over 130 sessions with the expo area playing home to 72 sponsors, 28 of which were new to the events for 2013, and 58 journalists, bloggers and analysts attended from a record 14 countries.

Today the organisers also unveiled the new branding to reflect the changing face of the industry and ensure that the event continues to be the must-attend pan-European appointment in the diaries of IT managers and CIOs. Moving forward, the event will simply be known as Powering the Cloud in order to unite the conference programme and to be more clearly relevant to the IT industry overall including storage, virtualisation and data centre, the long-standing roots of the event.

Powering the Cloud has evolved over the past ten years from a storage networking event to one that encompasses all aspects of the data centre. To reflect that, the organisers have adapted the branding to highlight six key thematic pillars of the conferences: storage, virtualisation, data centre, Big Data, security and managed services. The managed services theme will cater for those channel companies who are making the transition to cloud service providers, and for hosting and colocation players. The agenda will continue to benefit from the partnership with SNIA Europe (Powering the Cloud is the only European event endorsed by the association) and its vendor-neutral key storage technology education in addition to ongoing enhancements, developing the spotlight session element even further and increasing the debates and open platforms for analysts, vendors and users to share the stage and engage in discussions around the major talking points in the industry.

The new event branding will build on ten years of consistent success: throughout the two days of the conference last week, the Frankfurt Congress Center was buzzing with current hot discussion topics such as Big Data, security, IT management, data centre architecture and application delivery which were covered in the sessions and in spontaneous conversations among the attendees. In addition, delegates were kept up to speed with presentations on open source, cloud, solid state storage, software-defined ‘X’ and hot emerging technologies. The newly-introduced debate sessions about Big Data and managed services proved a great success with delegates and experts alike immersing themselves in open discussions and lively dialogue.

Carly Stephens, event manager for Powering the Cloud, commented “Over the past few years, we have continued to develop and improve the Powering the Cloud events to ensure that the content really is in line with the topics facing European IT professionals. Our new branding will provide a clear and more concise single event brand that showcases each one of the areas that the conference will cover. It will also help us expand as the market evolves, creating opportunities for more sponsors and delegates in the coming years. It is this approach that has enabled the event to prosper over the last ten years where others have not, and the input and support of SNIA Europe as well as leading analyst houses, industry bodies and associates will ensure that the core messages and positioning will remain relevant.”

“Like the conference SNIA Europe has evolved over the years to provide education and support for IT professionals responsible not only for data storage but for related technologies too. The datacentre is no longer a siloed environment and the association has mirrored that by expanding its charter,” said Bob Plumridge, Chairman of SNIA Europe. “We endorse Powering the Cloud because it continues to meet the requirements of the IT industry and we will maintain our close relationship with the organisers to ensure that the conference features a significant amount of neutral, vendor-independent content.”

The sponsors have been sending in their feedback following this year’s event:
“Powering the Cloud attracts a wide range of industry experts, channel partners and end users every year. In is a highly effective addition to our own marketing efforts and events, as it gives us a unique way of meeting key players and targets. It offers a perfect platform to showcase our latest technology developments such as our new BlackPearl Deep Storage Appliance; definitely time and money well spent,” said Steve Mackey, VP of EMEA at Spectra Logic.

“Emulex chose to launch its new Gen 5 Fibre Channel Flash Services technology for virtualised environments and database applications at Powering the Cloud 2013. This demonstrates how highly we value this event as the right vehicle to address our target audience. We have been a sponsor every year and have been continually impressed with how the organisers have refined the event to keep it fresh and relevant for vendors, resellers and customers alike,” said Jason Phippen, Senior Director EMEA Marketing at Emulex.

Paul Rowan, General Manager Storage Products, Toshiba Electronics Europe, said: “Powering the Cloud is an important event in our business calendar and we are impressed with the quality of the delegates and visitors attending. For us, it is an excellent educational platform to demonstrate our broad product portfolio for enterprise and datacentre storage and the keynotes offered the ideal opportunity to present our topics to a wider audience.”

Powering the Cloud 2014 will take place on 28th and 29th October 2014 in the same venue. Many of this year’s sponsors are already in discussion with the organisers regarding their options for 2014.