Test the Best: HPE’s Hyper Converged Solutions

By Jeff Garell

Have you ever run up against a resource constraint and the only way out was hugely expensive, required extensive design and engineering and then a migration just to be able to expand your resource pool?

Well, you’re not alone. I’ve been a victim of lock in or vendor’s short-sighted design many times in the past 33 years.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Hyper Converged solutions are engineered to simply “tack on” storage and compute that folds into the infrastructure like its been there all along. I know, it sounds like magic, but it’s not: it’s foresight and thoughtful engineering that makes HPE’s Hyper Converged solutions the best in the industry.

If you aren’t already in a hyperconverged market, you better start looking ahead. According to the well-respected industry analyst Gartner, this market segment will grow nearly 80 percent to reach almost $2 billion this year. This is big-time business, growing at an expected pace to reach nearly $5 billion – almost a quarter of the integrated systems niche – in just three more years.

And that’s why you need to come spend a couple of days here at Convergent Technologies Group. We’re going to give you an inside-out tour of what HPE’s Hyper Converged platforms have to offer during our Technical Summit on Sept. 21-22. We’re also giving you direct access to Joe Vidal, whose unofficial title is the HPE converged evangelist. More formally, he directs the company’s Americas Hybrid IT Channel Architecture Team. Not only will you learn about what’s on the market, you’ll get a glimpse of what’s coming next.

And yes, you have a host of different options to explore, but we aren’t the only ones who give the highest marks to HPE’s Hyper Converged systems – and you’re right to compare and contrast, especially when you’re making that kind of investment. The folks at BizTech magazine call HPE’s platform “a breeze” to deploy, while Gartner routinely rates these solutions in the upper right of its Magic Quadrant.

Actually, we encourage you to explore other options because we know that that will make you only more confident that HPE is the route to go. You’ll see that HPE delivers the optimal performance at the greatest value.

In addition to all of this Hyper Convergey-ness (yes, I’m copyrighting that, see me after the summit for licensing deals), we’ll dive into why Aruba is the leader in wireless and how they made the Super Bowl even more super. Plus, if you haven’t seen it before and even if you have, we’ll be covering storage with the HPE 3PAR and a deep dive into why it was a game changer when it was first introduced and why it still leads the pack.

But don’t just take our word for all this. The Technical Summit is your chance to come see it all for yourself – and take some of this cutting-edge technology out for a spin.

Jeff Garell is a co-founder of Convergent Technologies Group.

Executive Retreat at The Greenbrier to Focus on Continuity, Transformation

By Elizabeth Foster

“Continuity” and the willingness to “step and think outside of the box” are words that describe The Greenbrier, Convergent Technologies Group and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

In June, The Greenbrier – a historical legacy as one of America’s best resorts – and its community was tested as it faced massive flooding, the result of unprecedented levels of torrential rain. The national news showed images of homes, cars and other debris swept away in seemingly unstopping waves of water and mud. While the devastation destroyed much of the community, it didn’t stop the heart and resiliency of the community, which was buoyed by the reaction and support of The Greenbrier.

Even though this majestic, historical property was assessing severe damage across its property, the resort’s leaders opened its heart and its rooms to those who had lost everything. Two months later, many are still in the early stages of rebuilding their homes – and their lives.

Recognizing its role as a beacon in the community and a major employer in the region, The Greenbrier worked diligently to re-open its doors. In two months, Convergent Technologies Group will return again to The Greenbrier to host its annual Executive Retreat, partnering with HPE to discuss that latest in technology today – including resiliency when the unexpected might occur.

The background for the Oct. 21-23 is fitting. HPE is known for plowing through challenges, and today is recognized as a juggernaut for innovation and tried-and-tested technology. As a Platinum Partner, CTG shares those same values, refusing to settle for the status quo and pushing for next-generation solutions. At the same time, both companies have a history of empowering their people to be nimble, to be intuitive, to strive for excellence on a daily basis and to never settle for less than perfection.

For the Executive Retreat, technology leaders from Maryland, the District of Columbia, Virginia and North Carolina will be coming together with HPE’s Chief Business Strategist & Innovation Officer (aka Chief Creatologist) Joe Batista and CTG executives for open and frank discussions about today’s challenges. From digital transformation and the Internet of Things, from mobility issues to the need for hyper converged systems to handle virtual and storage environments, HPE and CTG together bring a new way of thinking and doing business. Collaboration is key but not the main factor for spurring on changes in technology. Executives are forced to do more with less with shrinking budgets and manpower, while still delivering business processes and continuity.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Batista’s keynote address will explore “The Pivoting Industry: What’s Your Next Move?”

Our CTG co-founders, John Monahan and Jeff Garell, have a united vision and focus for supporting their clients. They believe that executives who attend The Greenbrier Executive Retreat this year will expand their knowledge by learning key business best practices and how to maximize hyper converged environments to lower cost and down time – not to mention finite details on how to shrink and lower the cost of data footprint in the data center. And that’s just a few highlights.

We’ll be sharing more in the coming weeks about this Executive Retreat, which will featured rich discussions about technology and innovative thinking against the backdrop of historical elegance at The Greenbrier. Have you talked with us about saving a seat for you at this once-in-your-business-lifetime experience?

Elizabeth Foster is an inside sales representative at Convergent Technologies Group.

Synergy Creates Opportunities as a Bridge between Traditional, New IT

By Rod Knowles

A common question we hear from our clients and potential customers is how do they get from Point A to Point B? Meaning, they have invested significantly in traditional infrastructure, but they are lured by new technology that offers to open up new opportunities for their business. What are they to do?

Fortunately, our good partners at Hewlett Packard Enterprise have come through with the innovative Synergy portfolio, which breaks ground as composable infrastructure. Put more simply, this is a new architecture that allows you to construct your resources to your exact application needs, coupled with software-defined intelligence and a unified API.  HPE is the first manufacturer in the world to architect this kind of hybrid platform, which is the byproduct of thinking out of the box in how we build IT infrastructures.

Synergy closes that gap and integrates traditional IT environments, which are focused on operations drivers, with the new style of IT, which are more about applications and services. The upsides to all that are, new revenue streams and better customer experiences. 

Your tools in moving to that environment – which is the hallmark of the Idea Economy – are more about mobility, data analytics and cloud computing.  In other words, you can bring new products and services to market quicker with greater agility by utilizing composable infrastructure.

Let’s look at three key benefits:

• Operational velocity: Imagine needing to modify only a single line of code to maximize your business information – with the data center operating as the heart of any sized company – and put your data to work for you in an instant.

• Frictionless IT: Synergy is the ingredient that makes everything work together seamlessly, maximizing the horsepower of your legacy systems and opening the door to new technology. This provides the framework for your DevOps, pushing your business to advanced levels of collaboration and automation.

• Reduce costs: Take better advantage of cloud capabilities, gaining efficiency and ensuring you are maximizing every resource. Plus, Synergy is designed for easy scalability to grow with your business. 

Why Synergy? And why now?
Today’s marketplace calls for businesses to increasingly deliver services that are application centric, according to our colleagues at HPE. In the battle to remain relevant, businesses need to harness the reliability and cost-efficiency of legacy systems, but tap into greater flexibility and speed.

As Antonio Neri, executive vice president at HPE, puts it: “Market data clearly shows that a hybrid combination of traditional IT and private clouds will dominate the market over the next five years. Organizations are looking to capitalize on the speed and agility of the cloud but want the reliability and security of running business critical applications in their own datacenters. With HPE Synergy, IT can deliver infrastructure as code and give businesses a cloud experience in their data center."

What Synergy can do for you
With two of our CTG engineers among the first 100 individuals worldwide to earn certification in this new platform, we quickly recognized how Synergy is bringing breakthrough innovation to our industry. Trust us to show you how this platform can be integrated into your infrastructure and transform your business to seize untapped opportunities.

Rod Knowles is a solutions architect at Convergent Technologies Group.

Benefits of Working at CTG

We believe in hiring the right people and giving them the opportunities to grow with our company. We consider ourselves as something more than an IT company: Our business model relies on great people, and we empower them to do great things that ensure our clients achieve their business goals. Since our founding in 2006, we have continued to refine our compensation packages to reflect that value we place on our employees.

SALARY: We start by offering competitive salaries, which are based on experience and market location. Attractive salaries demonstrate our investment in hiring the right people and starting a long-term investment in their future with CTG.

REWARDS: Bonuses reflect ambitious-but-achievable job goals, which are aligned with our corporate business strategy. Put another way, when our business hits targeted milestones, our people share in our success.

HEALTH BENEFITS: We offer full medical, dental and vision insurance, allowing our people to focus on staying healthy and knowing that they have the right coverage if they need it.

VACATION: Our employees take advantage of two weeks of paid vacation annually.

RETIREMENT: CTG makes regular corporate contributions to our employees’ retirement funds, helping you plan for the long term.

TRAINING: We realize that IT is a specialized industry, so we invest significantly in ensuring our people have the knowledge and training to do their job. As employees master product lines and services, they gain the opportunity to advance into roles with greater responsibility. Our people own their personal development by pursuing the tools and skills they need to grow with CTG.

TEAM BUILDING: About once a month, we bring all our employees together for a team-building activity. It might be attending a sporting event in Richmond or perhaps in Washington, D.C., or closing the office a little early for a company dinner. We work hard to deliver the high quality service we pledge to our clients, so we encourage our people to take time to have fun and collaborative outside our daily work.

ANNUAL HOLIDAY PARTY: In December, we host our employees – accompanied by their significant others – for a weekend celebration to reflect on the past year and build excitement for what’s to come. In 2015, we enjoyed three days in New York City.

FortiExpress Brings Facts to You

By Carley Wessler

In this summer heat, nothing beats air conditioning and a cold beverage.
Next week, Convergent Technologies Group is offering that to our customers – with the bonus of inside access to the latest information security in the business.
We’re hosting the FortiExpress – an information security lab on wheels – at Hardywood Park Craft Brewery, 1601 Overbrook Road, #A. The event will kick off at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 4.

FortiExpress is an innovative resource created by Fortinet, our preferred partner for information security products. The lab is an 18-wheeler that brings Fortinet’s Network Security Platform to life.

Actually, Fortinet commissioned a pair of mobile labs, which are on the road in the “FAST & Secure” tour with stops in 100 cities and logging 25,000 miles over 270 days. We’re honored to bring the FortiExpress to Central Virginia.

Here’s why your business needs you to attend:

• Technology showcase – don’t just take our word for it. Explore the full suite of Fortinet security products that offer the latest in security threat detection from the best in the industry.
• Demonstrations – see for yourself how the best security products are both fast and easy to implement.
• Mobile data center – set up for performance testing.
• Networking – talk with other IT leaders across the region and learn about the changing threat landscape and ways to improve your security infrastructure.

Unfortunately, we can only fit so many people in the mobile lab, even when it’s expanded to its full 1,200-square-foot presentation size, and you don’t want to miss this opportunity. To reserve your space, simply click here to register online to reserve your space. The live presentations and demo will run from 4:30-5:30 p.m.

And once you’ve taken in everything in the FortiExpress, we’ll be offering refreshments and beverages at Hardywood until 7 p.m. We look forward to helping you learn more about the right security products that will protect the heart of your enterprise.

Carley Wessler is an account executive at Convergent Technologies Group.

Now Hiring: We’re Looking for People with Drive to Succeed

By John Monahan

A company on the move always relies on the talents of its people. And with a strategic plan tailored to smart growth in the year ahead, Convergent Technologies Group is looking to hire people with the right skills and drive to advance us on our journey.

We are looking for people who:

1. Thrive in an entrepreneurial environment. We believe in hiring smart people and giving them the opportunity to do good work. Ideally, new employees will bring some unique and proven skills within the IT industry, but we also offer tailored training with our key manufacturing partners. As a small business, we give our people the opportunity to push their boundaries and learn new skills with our products as well as our day-to-day operations. This is a two-way street: We’ll give you the nourishment you need to recognize your potential and turn it all into something real.

2. Show passion about being a solid team contributor. We believe in giving our people the freedom and tools to forge their own path, as they deliver work that advances us on some ambitious goals that we share. Together, we can make a bigger impact than within our individual roles. We work hard as a team, and we celebrate our successes regularly. (Have you heard about our corporate holiday trip each December? Last year, we hosted our employees and their significant others on an all-expenses-paid weekend in New York City!)

3. Find innovative ways to get the job done. After all, we’re in the IT business, where inventiveness and problem solving are part of daily life. We want people who demonstrate creativity in how they work, which opens up new, market-differentiating opportunities in how we partner with and support our clients. Our manufacturing partners are moving at lightning pace with product innovations, and our people need to find the best ways to engage with customers to implement the right solutions.

4. Want to push our business to hit the next level. We’re at a pivotal moment in our corporate evolution, and we know that building the right talent pool is essential to achieving some aggressive-but-attainable business goals. We need people who have the drive to push up to those heights, while also maintaining our hallmark of high-touch customer service and ensuring our long-term sustainability.

Over the past decade, Jeff and I have consciously crafted a business where the contributions of our employees are recognized and rewarded, starting with competitive salaries and complemented with generous bonuses. By building a business where people want to come to work, we’ve grown at paces that consistently outperform others in our industry.

What roles are open now?

Right now, as we look at our business forecasts for the coming year, we are hiring to expand our sales and marketing outreach. We want people who not only understand our vision, but can see themselves as key contributors in achieving that vision. More specifically, we are hiring:

• Enterprise account managers – serve as the critical bridge between our clients and our services team. Communications skills and product knowledge are critical for this role.

• Junior marketing specialist – supports our overall marketing strategy, particularly as we move into new markets and offer an expanded product portfolio.

• Junior accounting associate – aids in back-office functions that keep our business running smoothly with solid financial reporting.

Applying to CTG is easy: Just send your resume to resume@ctgva.com. Most importantly, tell us why we need to hire you – and what you can offer to help CTG accelerate our future.

John Monahan is co-founder of Convergent Technologies Group.

Takeaways from Discover 2016: IT Solutions that Work for You

by John Monahan and Jeff Garell

Ask any of our team members and guests for our top three takeaways from Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Discover 2016 last week in Las Vegas, and you’ll probably not get the same answers from everyone. With so much information to gather and technology to observe and experience and top experts to hear, we often branched out to make the most of the agenda.

Without question, however, the centerpiece of Discover was our interaction with CEO Meg Whitman and all the HPE leadership. Once a year, Convergent Technologies Group hosts clients in a venue where they hear directly from the top minds in the industry. As an HPE Platinum Partner, we have rare access to connect our customers with those who are bringing cutting-edge products to the market.  These general sessions, demo labs and innovation break-outs help us deliver a level of expertise that differentiates the relationships that CTG offers. As a partner in our clients’ success, we connect you with the right people and solutions so you can do what you do best – and accelerate your growth.

Of course, the annual Discover showcase is when HPE unveils new products and solutions upgrades. Let us share a few favorites that we’re excited to be offering:

•  HPE Synergy: This is composable infrastructure, which brings a new architecture that allows you to construct your resources to your exact application needs, coupled with software-defined intelligence and a unified API. Two of our CTG engineers were among the first 100 individuals worldwide to earn certification in this new platform.

• CloudSystem 10: Do you work with hybrid IT? Then this is the comprehensive cloud solution you need. You can stand it up as a private cloud or integrate it with your existing cloud, virtualized and traditional resources.

• HPE Edgeline IoT Systems:  Before too long, more than 20 billion devices will be connected to the “edge” of traditional networks – this is what the Internet of Things is all about. HPE has unveiled Edgeline, a platform that helps you make the most of information on the fly. This might be from crews in the field, sales reps on the retail floor – basically anywhere that you are creating data that can drive your business. Breaking new ground, Edgeline will help you quickly gain insights from that data at the edge.

•  Hyperconverged380: With our unique capabilities in hyperconverged systems, you know this got our attention.  Designed specifically to help mid-sized businesses deploy virtual machines in minutes, it also is a foundational step for those organizations to move to a hybrid infrastructure. This will allow you to spend more time innovating, while increasing your productivity and flexibility.

• Docker Shipping with Servers: HPE will be shipping Docker, our go-to application container platform, with all its servers. Why does this matter? This automatically incorporates what you need for your modern data center when you install your server, with cross-platform performance, appropriate security and integrated support.

• Cloud transition: Dropbox has transitioned from the Amazon Web Services public cloud and onto an all-HPE cloud solution. The result is “industrial-strength, enterprise-grade security and manageability.” This is easing the transition to the cloud for CIOs everywhere.

• Better IT management: With OneView 3.0, you can simplify day-to-day operations, deploy applications faster and enable your IT to take advantage of new tools.

We’re already meeting and talking with clients about how they might benefit from these new solutions. Each enterprise has different needs, but we have definitely brought back new ideas and strategies that we can tailor to all of our customers.

What solution can we bring to you to advance you to the next level?

John Monahan and Jeff Garell are co-founders of CTG.