TORONTO – At the Dell/ITWC Cookin’ IT Right event at the Gossip Restaurant not only was some great BBQ served up but also new knowledge about software defined networking (SDN).
Dell Canada’s position on the burgeoning SDN market is that it presents a new, innovative approach to solving tough enterprise challenges.
Armughan Ahmad, the vice president of networking & converged solutions for Dell, delivered a keynote address to an audience of channel partners and enterprise customers. Ahmad leads the sales and systems engineering teams globally that deliver what he calls SDx, cloud, big data, mobile and security solutions comprised of networking, servers and storage solutions for large enterprise, public institutions, and the SMB.
In his presentation, Ahmad opened many eyes to the possibilities of SDN and how it pushes the envelope. For example, he cited that Facebook is able to manage 20,000 servers with one IT manager because of the advances of SDN.
This point resonated with Michael King, the president of DNM Analytics Canada. He told CDN that the Dell presentations were technically sound and that he was unaware of the strength of the networking capabilities of Dell.
“With Dell’s networking, the message was clear; their networking capability is strong and with the BBQ event experience overall I walked away with a more confident feeling. After the SDN presentation, for me it now requires more thought and I now have more things to focus on. I think it can strengthen solutions on the cloud side and with apps in the cloud. I think Canadian firms are moving in this direction,” King said.
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Ahmad’s keynote was followed up with a deeper dive on SDN by Kevin Burgess, the senior enterprise technologist with Dell Canada’s networking group.
Burgess unveiled Dell’s SDN strategy, which is a virtualization approach to networks that brings benefit of increased efficiency by dynamically integrating with applications and automatically provisioning based on real-time demands.
Andrew Lindzon, the president of Ashlin Technology Solutions Inc. of Toronto, said the SDN knowledge and insight gained from the BBQ event was very important to him.
“I was aware of software-defined storage but did not know how much Dell was committed to it and SDN. The event was great. Location was easy to get to and the food was fantastic. I also found myself sitting with corporate end users, which adds another networking value to the event. I prefer mixed events to reseller only,” he said.
Also at the BBQ event, Dell executives revealed a strategy partnership with Nutanix. Lindzon thought this was big news. “Dell is going to OEM Nutanix, since they are really a software company to not be so competitive on hardware,” he added.
One of Dell’s go-to-market strategies on SDN is that it begins with the right hardware.
According to Dell, the foundation of an SDN strategy begins with next-generation industry-standard hardware. Dell’s plan is to combine its own networking solutions with open networking partners’ advanced offerings for a broader range of next-generation network and SDN frameworks, ensuring investment protection, direct access to open networking innovations and freedom from proprietary lock-in.