All of Us Can Benefit From TechFieldDay

Where would you go to hear more or find out about a new product or a new company? The Web? Blogs? the company’s website? Probably all of the above are true. But sometimes that information is
just… not… enough…

I would like to share with you a resource that I find is of great value to me, and not well known (if you ask me).

I was looking to find out some more about Nutanix. They have a different look on the way you should virtualize your datacenter. Combine your storage and compute in one piece of hardware – provide a large amount of performance in one box, make it highly available and scalable – you have an Enterprise solution. I must admit – I am over-simplifying this a bit (a lot actually) but I encourage you to investigate this product more on your own.

I went to their site to try and find our more about them. There are some whitepapers, some nice short videos, and resources, but I could not find the in-depth information that I was looking for.

How exactly does the product work? What is inside – what is the business strategy? So of course I could contact their sales department – and they would get back to me – then give me a sales pitch, and then back and forward until I would finally get in touch with someone technical that could answer my questions.

In comes TechfieldDay.

Stephen Foskett from GestaltIT has an amazing program where he brings together emerging companies some with new technologies (other established companies as well) and independent bloggers, to a two-day event full of presentations and discussions. These are highly beneficial both to the presenting companies and to the bloggers themselves. I had the privelege of participating in TechfieldDay #5 last year.

I remembered that Nutanix presented at a recently at Techfielday #8. Here is the link to the 2 hour presentation they gave.

I just sent an email to Stephen to thank him. I learned more about the company and their product from the two hour presentation that he recorded and posted – than I had learned from any of the the information on their site or anywhere else on the web. The reason being, the level of presentation delivered at TechfieldDay is not a marketing presentation (and if it is - the presenters will get their head chewed off). The questions asked are ones I would ask myself, technical, detailed and sometimes mind boggling. This is the stuff that interests me.

The fact that these sessions are recorded – and I can watch/download later - actually saves me and immense amount of time. True I spent 2 hours watching to a presentation (not in one stretch though) – but I am sure it will save me a lot more – getting the information I want about a company and their product and not the information their marketing would like me to hear.

I would advise you all - if you would like an in-depth explanation about a product - TechfieldDay is a great place to look. It is not only virtualization-centric, but also storage, backup, network – practically anything technology related can be found there.