Thank You for Attending PC Professional’s Catch
a Wave Seminar Series 2010
With over 40 attendees, I can proudly say that PC
Professional’s Catch a Wave Seminar Series 2010 was
a success! Seminar presentations by Kirkland Jue,
Microsoft SharePoint expert, Mark McClure, Microsoft
virtualization specialist from Synnex and Sunil
Patil from the HP P4000 product team, allowed
attendees to get a first-hand look at Microsoft’s &
HP’s new and cool technologies.
Registration began promptly at 9:30 am with a
rush of attendees traveling from San Francisco,
Alameda and other surrounding Bay Area cities.
Attendees were greeted with a PC Pro goodie bag,
which included a 4GB flash drive, PC Pro notebook &
golden coin chocolate. If the chocolate wasn’t
enough to obtain a sugar high, doughnuts and coffee
were also provided from Henry’s Cafe.
Following registration, Track 1: SharePoint 2010,
kicked off with an enthusiatic/passionate/humorous
presentation by Microsoft SharePoint expert,
Kirkland Jue. To be honest, I don’t think I have
ever seen someone make SharePoint this exciting! Not
only did Kirkland present why SharePoint rocks, but
also how any small/medium business can use it in
their business process. Incorporating demos
throughout his presentation made his points come
alive and I am sure most of us were asking
ourselves, “gosh, why am I not using this
technology?”. I would have to say my favorite
SharePoint 2010 feature Kirkland demonstrated would
have to be the voicemail feature where your
voicemails appear in an email. I can’t tell you how
much time I spend sorting through which voicemails
are high priority and which are not.
After an hour presentation on SharePoint 2010,
Track 2: Microsoft Hyper-V directly followed. Mark
McClure, a Microsoft virtualization specialist,
stepped onto the stage with a compelling
presentation on Microsoft Hyper-V. Mark began his
presentation with one simple question: why
virtualization? I know that many companies might
steer away from virtualization because they do not
understand it. Mark McClure addressed this by taking
a deep dive into what virtualization is and what it
means for your company. Simply put: IT efficiency,
energy saving and cost saving. Mark then touched on
what Microsoft’s virtualization strategy is and what
sets them apart from their other competitors, price
being one of the main differentiators. In my
opinion, the main takeaway from Mark’s presentation
is that virtualization isn’t going away and it is
something that businesses must understand in order
to continue to run their IT department efficiently
while simultaneously cutting costs.
At noon, the Networking Lunch began with ravioli,
salad and sandwiches from Genova, italian
delicatessen. Attendees had a chance to mingle with
each other as well as with our speakers from
Microsoft and HP. After 45 minutes of networking,
lunch concluded with an attendee raffle which
included Windows 7 software, Microsoft t-shirts,
pens and mugs.
Lastly, our Catch a Wave Seminar Series 2010
Seminar concluded with a final presentation from the
HP P4000 product team. Sunil Patel, an HP solutions
architect, added to our virtualization theme by
discussing what HP products are used in a
virtualized environment. After Mark McClure’s deep
dive into virtualization, Sunil Patel, addressed
HP’s converged infrastructure used to optimize your
IT environment, reduce your cost of storage
networking, reduce the impact of data growth and
reduce energy use with the HP Data Center Smart
Grid. Sunil also discussed today’s challenges when
it comes to virtualizing your systems. For example,
with a virtualized environment there are new storage
requirements, which some storage vendors do not
address appropriately with a one-size-fits-all
approach.
After a long day of Microsoft SharePoint, Hyper-V
and HP storage solutions, our Catch a Wave Seminar
Series 2010 concluded with a thank you to our
sponsors, Microsoft & HP, along with a thank you to
all of our attendees.
Once again if you attended PC Professional’s
Catch a Wave Seminar Series 2010, thank you! And if
you missed us, we hope to see you again at our next
event!
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