HP Discover

Another year rolls around and HP Discover 2012 approaching. While its uncertain if I'll be attending, for reasons I won't wallow in, I will reflect on some of the highlights and concerns from last years event.

Certainly stealing the show was Paul McCartney and a performance that left me a new fan, yes I'm sort of doing this backwards chronologically.

Stepping back again, the venue, The Sands Conference center was all together very good, although chasing sessions around at the last minute and trying to get into rooms that I had signed up for was a bit difficult. It seemed information about session changes was tough to come by, even at a technology based event. I was disappointed more than once over having sessions moved, canceled or outright different from what was on the schedule. All of these were HP mainstream labs or presentations, none were HP NonStop sessions, Disappointing even more because of the limited nature of the offerings.

The HP Certified Professional folks, now HP ExpertOne, were excellent as always. Providing a great reception suite, news and information about the program going forward. Rich Gossman and his team were on target and provided a great experience for HP ExpertOne professionals. The only unfortunate blemish involved on-site testing for credentials, despite signing up for testing prior to the event, the testing team seemed overwhelmed, the suite too small the registration process was cumbersome and the whole testing process seemed very difficult compared to previous years. To be fair changed have been made to this process going forward, so improvements should be realized.

General sessions were glitzy and splashy as expected, but well attended and organized. The usual offerings from the now departed former CEO were of the kind level one would expect for a show this size. Little to nothing was mentioned about NonStop. Typical though, from a company concerned with volume.

The exhibits and tradeshow, while impressive from an HP viewpoint, included things like portable datacenter pods, the usual enormous displays from Microsoft loads of color and vast swaths of products targeting the majority of the PC and printer lines, as expected. The NonStop area seemed to be relegated to the ugly stepchild kiosks with little visibility and it took some time to locate in the sea of servers. True, it's a smaller volume of HP's business and granted many of these vendors are not interested in toting their tradeshow exhibits to Las Vegas at their cost, only to answer questions and hand out give-aways to a Linux or Windows professional about NonStop when they're really looking to speak with NonStop people. We've come a long way from the usual ITUG events, Regional User Groups and the future still seems uncertain. Especially with CEO's shuffling chairs, news of divisions consolidating within HP and we're left wondering what is HP doing with NonStop?

I'm not sure there is still value in large events like HP Discover, considering the cost, but I do appreciate the offer of $300 bucks off the registration fee for being a Connect member but I already get that for being an HP ExpertOne too and no doubt I'll get a "special" registration code from our HP Account team to register. This leaves me wondering what the real value is or if there is any value left.

The most important part of these events, to me, is seeing friends and colleagues and networking, sharing and comparing. This is true for NonStop product vendors and VARs. I always enjoy talking to folks about new products and ideas. A smaller event may fill that need? Perhaps, the NonStop Symposium in San Jose was apparently well received and attended, but no mention of any further events like that one.

Yes, we all secretly hope HP will spin-off NonStop, perhaps even call it Tandem again. But we all know that's not going to happen with a company like HP. We can hope that HP will someday realize the value of NonStop and it can come out from the shadows and smudges of printer ink.

-K

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