The Cisco Partner Summit has been a huge success, and very energizing for Iron Bow. Our team got a good look at their strategy for next gen technologies and the increasing importance of the role we play as their partner.
Here is a 5-point high level wrap-up.
1. The Cisco / Iron Bow Partnership…Iron Bow continues to invest in our partnership with Cisco year over year, elevating our technical expertise through Masters Certifications and Specializations.
We were honored that our efforts of the past year were recognized at the Summit with three prestigious awards highlighting the Data Center Practice, including: Commercial U.S./ Canada East Data Center Partner of the Year, Public Sector Data Center Partner of the Year, U.S. Data Center Partner of the Year. These affirm the technical strength and the dedication of the Iron Bow Data Center team.
2. Virtualization and SDN: A New Piece to the Puzzle…Virtualization is spreading throughout the data center and will offer unprecedented flexibility in everything from networking to storage. However, don’t think you’ll be abandoning most of your network hardware any time soon.
In the enterprise, today’s ASIC’s are still the king of speed and scalability. While technologies like SDN will find a home and play an important role in the network, they will have to integrate and operate in a scalable ecosystem of technologies. Networks will need to leverage a hybrid of both hardware and software to achieve optimum performance results.
Very interesting to see Cisco’s take on this at Partner Summit, and they can never be underestimated. There is a wake of failed attempts by competitors to break Cisco’s dominance on the networking market. Cisco adapts to change and invests in R&D like nobody else in the industry, resulting in innovation across the network space.
Iron Bow is well positioned with these innovation cycles, and participates in many technical advisory boards, and Beta programs surrounding these technologies and is looking forward to helping our customers integrate these innovations into their own ecosystems.
3. The Proliferation of Sensors and its Implications…In the near future, low cost sensors will be found in everything from refrigerators to sportswear to military tanks. These IP addressed sensors offer tremendous opportunities for tracking, situational awareness and automation.
However, all of these sensors put a burden on the network. And, the amount of data they create will cause additional problems for the traditional compute and storage infrastructure.
As a solutions provider, Iron Bow possesses the skills to help our customers relieve this burden and take advantage of these new data sources. Not only can we help build the connectivity and the network, we can leverage our expertise in Big Data and Data Analytics to collect, normalize and analyze the data turning it into valuable mission intelligence.
4. A Reality Check on Cloud: Not a Panacea…There has been so much talk about PaaS, IaaS, SaaS, etc., totally transforming IT. But, these models can be costly as a wholesale strategy and confusing to customers. They just aren’t sure where they should run their application workloads. Many are coming to the rude awakening that some public cloud offerings have just not delivered on the cost savings.
The reality is that “X-as-a-Service” is not a cure-all. Most infrastructures will be “Hybrid IT” that combine cloud services and traditional delivery models. We need to help our customers make intelligent decisions about how to securely leverage the right combination of services and technologies.
5. The Growing Role of Integrators…If I had to name one takeaway from the Summit, it would be that the role of solutions integrators is growing in significance and scope. We will increasingly play the role of an educator, consultant and advisor to guide our customers through a labyrinth of models, brands, platforms and technologies – old and new, virtual and physical.
And, the timing couldn’t be better for Iron Bow. We have all the resources we need in place – from the mature services, to the advanced engineering expertise, to the leading solutions knowledge and well-established manufacturing relationships, including our strong and long standing partnership with Cisco.
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