Join us at the 2018 Annual Technical Summit!

The time has come for the Annual Convergent Technologies Group Technical Summit! This year we will be condensing the summit into a single day on September 13^th at our Midlothian office. Every year we work hard to listen to customer feedback and wishes in order to put together an agenda focused on what our clients are looking for in their environments. Along with our own Master ASE certified engineers we will be joined by industry experts that will take a deep dive into the technologies that we are seeing have the great impact in the marketplace. This year, the focus will be on the following:

• IT trending towards Digital Transformation
• Composable infrastructure
• HyperConverged Infrastructure and where it fits
• Network Access Control and its positioning in a multi-vendor environment
• Predictive Analytics and how it eases management in your infrastructure

The concept of the Technical Summit was built around providing the end user with an event that is more than just product pitches and slide shows. The Technical Summit allows for attendees to get hands on with the technologies they are learning about, and to see the workflows in real time, running in our Live Demo Lab. The best part? No sales people are allowed in the room! We are strong believers in letting the technologies speak for themselves, and what better way than to see it live and to have a technical expert there to answer questions and work through potential issues or needs in real time!

This year we will be heading to Ruth’s Chris Steak House after the event for dinner and more conversation. There is still time to secure your spot at the Technical summit. Please reach out to events@ctgva.com or to Dalton Gormus (CTG’s Marketing Director) at dgormus@ctgva.com to RSVP today. Space is limited, and seats are going fast! We look forward to seeing you there!

HPE Discover 2018 Recap

Dalton Gormus

Last month, I attended HPE Discover 2018 in Las Vegas, NV. This was my first time in Sin City and I was transported to a whole other world. When I stepped into the Transformation Zone in the Sands Expo, I felt like I was Alice in Wonderland, completely lost but entirely intrigued. You could find everything from Lego displays to the Hack Shack. HPE Discover was a 3-day event that featured various speakers from all over the world discussing topics ranging from Blockchain to Intelligent System Tuning (IST).

The first large session I attended was, Achieving IT Agility in Mobile, IoT and Cloud with Aruba, presented by Janice Le, Aruba Networks Chief Marketer and Parth Narasimhan, Aruba, CTO. Le began the session with introducing the idea that many industries are heading into an experience economy, we are no longer buying just a good or a service, we are buying an experience. The Intelligent Edge is the experience economy we are seeing in IT, it is where smart meets digital. Aruba Networks has recently partnered with major companies like CBRE and HermanMiller Furniture to create smart and digital workplaces to make you workspace feel like home, and this is only the beginning for Aruba. CBRE is using Aruba to create smart buildings for design and IoT sensors. HermanMiller is taking their office furniture to the next level with connected desks that adjust to your height and chairs that know when you are getting up to use the restroom or if you are leaving for the evening. Narasimhan later stepped out on stage to discuss Aruba Introspect, a sensor that is used in the network to alert engineers if there is any suspicious activity going on whether it is inside or outside the company. Introspect was noted by one of our own engineers as an IT trend to keep an eye on within the next year, it is something that many companies are going to want in their tool box.

GenZ Lego Display

The General Session was the most awaited session of the week presented by Antonio Neri, HPE President and CEO. Neri addressed the digital transformation we are experiencing and the three biggest factors that HPE will be tackling during the transformation. Much like what Le was discussing with an experience economy, HPE will be focusing on transformative technology, people and economics. And to enhance this transformation the products that HPE wants to focus on are, HPE OneView, a software-defined infrastructure that eliminates the complex manual processes and increases the speed and flexibility of storage. And, Infosight, which was discussed by Aruba Networks in the previous session is another product HPE will be focusing on; currently only available for 3PAR and Nimble, but soon it will be available for all HPE products. This transformation will be vital for HPE and how companies operate, Neri said, “our purpose is to advance how we live and work”. The way we can advance and transform all of this, is to live in the intelligent edge, the “future-edge” where we interact with customers. Neri announced that HPE will be investing $4 billion into the Intelligent Edge over the next four years, only to further enhance opportunities for businesses. Following that announcement, Neri brought out Ford Motors CIO, Jeff Lemmer. The two sat on stage and discussed the strong partnership between the companies and how they will continue due to the speed and innovation HPE has shown Ford. The General Session also touched on HPE Greenlake FlexCapacity. Greenlake was featured throughout the week with displays in the Social Media forum and various sessions and booths. It is a pay-for only what you use infrastructure capacity that essentially will never run out. Pat O’Conner from Business Alliances ONX came on stage to discuss the steps to take in order to make Greenlake a part of client’s infrastructure. It is flexible, because you should never run out of the IT resources when using, it is easier for customers to engage with and it will cut down contracts exchanged by a few pages.

HPE Greenlake display

HPE made it a point to mix education and entertainment equally, which made you feel like you were not working all day. The week ended with relaxed networking and a performance by pop-rock band OneRepublic. Discover was incredibly informative, and I am grateful I was able to attend this large HPE event after only being a member of the CTG team for a few months. The biggest piece of information I took from this event was that HPE is moving in a direction that will make things simple and unified to create a better experience for partners and customers. With products like Greenlake, picking and choosing what you want rather than having it all are becoming more popular and are designed to help you save and have stronger structures.

If you are and IT professional and interested in learning more about some of these products and our services, please reach out or register for one of our events to speak with HPE and CTG experts!

Small Business, Big Opportunities!

This week we are celebrating Small Business Week. Convergent Technologies Group is highlighting the ways that IT helps small businesses grow and succeed in a fast past, technology driven world. Our company was founded in 2005 as a small business right here in Richmond, Va. Over the years we have used our technology partners to grow our organization into one that supports some of the largest Enterprise Customers in the state, while maintaining a direct focus on the Small to Mid-Size Market. No two businesses are the same and whether you are a large Enterprise, or a five-person business, IT matters and is equally as important to your success. Convergent works with small businesses to provide big business infrastructures and solutions like data storage, creating a mobile environment and working to give you ease in managing multiple systems.

Storage has become a recurring conversation with Small Businesses. In today’s data driven world, even the smallest companies are creating huge pools of storage that need to reside somewhere. In most cases, this data needs to be accessed quickly and effectively because even the smallest delays to your customers’ needs can result in lost revenue. Whether you require Direct Attach, Network Attached, or SAN attached storage, Convergent has the product portfolio and expertise to evaluate the needs of your business and offer solutions that fit within your requirements and most importantly, your budget.

Today’s workforce is more mobile than ever! Statistics show that the average end user has four to five devices that they use daily. The question that everyone is asking is how to ensure a consistent work experience, no matter the device, while maintaining the highest and most up to date security that is available. If you are like me, no matter where you go for a business meeting, the first thing you do is try to find a guest Wi-Fi to connect to while you are there. This is another point of security that nearly all businesses are having to think about and react to. The balance of providing a reliable network to your employees, clients, partners and guests, while also keeping the network and your Intellectual Property is one that we are uniquely positioned to address for our customers. We have helped customers large and small secure their networks using a variety of products and partnerships. We can sit down with you to discuss your connectivity and security needs to build the right solution for your business.

The third issue that we are consistently addressing with our Small Business Partners is the difficulty in managing multiple systems in the same environment, while finding room for all the equipment to reside. Convergent recognized the trend of the industry to move towards Hyper-Converged and Cloud ready solutions several years ago and has worked to put together solutions that will reduce space, while removing the complexity of managing multi-tenant environments. We partner with vendors that understand that ease of management, along with the ability to work with Cloud solution providers is an important step for any business, specifically small businesses.

Convergent is built around recognizing trends, both in the IT industry and within our customer-base. We work to talking with our customers to get an understanding of the challenges that they are seeing in the marketplace, and how IT will play a role in meeting those challenges head on. We are well-positioned to work with Small Businesses to provide everything from consulting to hardware, all the way down to Managed Services. Let’s sit down and talk about what your business needs out of its IT infrastructure and come up with a solution that fit the need of your specific business!