EMC Forum one of SA’s premier Cloud Computing Events

Aug 15th, 2011

More than 1,000 of EMC Southern Africa’s customers and partners as well as media representatives and analysts attended the EMC Forum 2011, a one-day event focusing on how cloud computing is transforming IT and how organisations can accelerate their journey to the cloud.

The EMC Forum 2011 was hosted by EMC Southern Africa on 4 August 2011 at Vodaworld in Midrand. In his welcoming address, EMC Southern Africa Country Manager Inana Nkanza promised delegates they would discover how to lower costs, improve business agility and unlock the power of their Big Data through cloud computing and enhanced data storage.

“EMC’s mission is to lead our customers on their journey to cloud computing and transforming IT,” Nkanza said. “Current IT infrastructures are expensive and bound by rigidity and complexity. At EMC, we understand your driving need to be more agile. Cloud computing represents a single way to address these issues and transform the way problems are resolved.”

The event was structured into four main streams: Storage, Cloud, Big Data as well as Backup and Recovery solutions. In addition to Nkanza, other presenters included Chad Sakac, Vice President of EMC’s VMware Technical Alliance; Eoghan O’Donaghue, Principal Advisor of the Executive Briefing Centre at EMC Ireland; Sandra Hamilton, Vice President, EMC Consulting, EMC Corporation; and John O’Callaghan, Senior Director, Executive Briefing Programmes, EMEA and India.

EMC also hosted Hands-On vLabs, where delegates were able to spend time with EMC’s portfolio of cloud and Big Data enabling products. It was the ideal opportunity to learn how EMC products integrate with VMware to provide the best visibility and management of the cloud. Delegates gained an understanding of how to secure, backup and protect their cloud, VMware and EMC environments with vLabs featuring Avamar, RSA and VPLEX. They also test drove some of EMC’s latest storage products – VMAX, VNX and VNXe – all powered by the EMC vCloud.

“The feedback we received from delegates on the day was overwhelmingly positive, and the social media wires have been buzzing with excitement over the Forum,” Nkanza said. “We have been thrilled by enterprises’ interest in both cloud computing and Big Data, which together represent the future of IT.”