IT specialist event organiser EVITO has revealed the results of its brand new one-day conference and expo FLASH FORWARD, the event dedicated to flash and SSD storage technologies that took place on 14th June 2016 in London.
Throughout the day a total of 150 people walked through the doors of the conference to attend the educational sessions by leading industry speakers, meet with the 22 sponsoring vendors and network with other data storage professionals.
“We are thrilled with the event and so seem to be the attendees,’ said Paul Trowbridge, event director, EVITO. “In our feedback forms 100% of respondents said they will attend FLASH FORWARD again and would recommend it to a colleague or peer. Additional vendors are already enquiring about sponsoring the next edition.”
Following the success of the London conference EVITO is now considering dates for the 2017 edition of FLASH FORWARD and planning to take the event to Germany.
A number of attendees took to sharing their views on the conference on twitter “What a great event, looking forward to the next one!’ posted @Tintri_EMEA, while @NimbleStorage tweeted “Great panel line up now at #SSDFlashLondon!” @Orberi of SolidFire was particularly impressed with the final panel “A powerhouse of mind power on stage at #flashforward with @mr_coops and @storagebod” with @storagebod himself tweeting “Great presentation from Peter Buschman of http://booking.com.”
Sponsoring the event were:
- DDN
- EMC
- Hitachi Data Systems
- HGST
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise
- IBM
- Infinidat
- Kaminario
- Micron Technology
- NetApp
- Nimble Storage
- NVMdurance
- Oracle
- PernixData
- Pure Storage
- SanDisk
- SolidFire
- Tegile Systems
- Tintri
- Toshiba
- Violin Memory
- Virtual Instruments
Speakers and panellists, including end users, included:
- Alex McDonald, Vice-Chair, SNIA Europe
- Allan Fenwick, EMEA SE Director, Violin Memory
- Andy Walls, IBM FlashSystem Chief Architect and CTO
- Brian Carmody, CTO, Infinidat
- Carla Arend, Program Director, European Software, IDC Europe
- Chris Evans, co-founder, Langton blue, and founding blogger, Architecting.IT
- Chris Mellor, Storage Editor, The Register
- Christian Dickmann, VSAN Lead Developer & Architect, VMware
- Dimitris Krekoukias, Global Technology and Strategy Architect, Nimble Storage
- Gary Lyng, Senior Director Marketing & Strategy, Data Center Solutions, SanDisk
- Gavin Tweedie, EMEA Operations Manager, Virtual Instruments
- James Smith, Systems Engineer, PernixData
- Laurence James, NEMEA Products, Alliances and Solutions Marketing Manager, NetApp
- Mark Peters, Practice Director & Senior Analyst, ESG
- Martin Glassborow aka 'StorageBod'
- Martin Cooper, International Technical Director, SolidFire
- Molly Rector, CMO, DataDirect Networks
- Peter Buschman, Product Owner Storage, Booking.com
- Randy Kerns, Senior Strategist, Evaluator Group
- Rob Peglar, Vice President, Advanced Storage, Micron Technology
- Simon Kearney, Head of Technology Hosting & Infrastructure, Grass Roots.
- Stephen Gilderdale, System Engineering Manager, Primary Storage, All Flash, EMC
- Steve Manzanero, Systems Engineer, Tegile
- Steve Lewis, CTO, HDS UK
- Tom O’Neill, EMEA CTO, Kaminario
- Troy Alexander, Systems Engineering Manager UK, Tintri
- Walter Hinton, Senior Global Director, HGST
Troy Alexander, systems engineer at Tintri, said “We have seen a huge growth in the adoption of our flash technology since launching it in 2015 and this event could not have arrived at a more appropriate time for us. It is exciting to be a part of the event to explore how people are using flash storage and the impact it’s having on the industry right now.”
Gavin Tweedie, director of EMEA operations, Load DynamiX Group, at Virtual Instruments, added “For Virtual Instruments these conferences are all about reconnecting with industry influencers and meeting new potential partners and customers. At FLASH FORWARD we met with several of our key global partners in addition to IT buyers, managers, channel partners in the storage ecosystem. This was our first year attending FLASH FORWARD but we are looking forward to next year.”
To register for updates on future editions of FLASH FORWARD please email the organisers. Vendors interested in sponsorship opportunities can find further information at: www.flashforward.io. You can also find regular updates about the event at www.twitter.com/ssdflashforward
