Government Technology

Storage Networking World (SNW) Europe the region’s largest independent conference dedicated to data and storage management this year will open its doors from 27 to 29 October at Congress Frankfurt, the same venue that hosted the event in the past four years. Having received highly positive feedback last year, once again the theme will be “Information in Motion”. In 2008 the conference will offer an attractive combination of ‘classic’ sessions such as server and storage virtualisation, data security and IP storage tutorials, alongside new elements such as the green datacentre and the Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) tracks and workshops on datacentre products testing and evaluation by analyst house ESG.
    
Co-owned and endorsed by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Europe and organised by Angel Business Communications, SNW Europe has repeatedly attracted delegates from all business sectors including financial, government and retail.
    
The success of the conference is reflected in the level of interest from delegates, sponsors, as well as media and analysts. In 2007 nearly 1,500 people from 28 countries walked through the conference doors over the three days, including 72 journalists and analysts from 19 countries. The sponsor retention rate is also impressive: a total of 14 organisations have repeatedly supported the event since Angel took over the organisational responsibilities and relocated the conference to Frankfurt and this year the conference has already attracted 13 new sponsors including Oracle and BT.

Sharing experiences
Three conference tracks at SNW Europe 2008 are devoted to IT end-users from across the region sharing their own experiences of deploying storage-related technologies and services to help address their business challenges. Speakers represent a wide cross-section of industry types but confirmed customer speakers who relate to the UK public sector include Devon & Cornwall Police and Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust.  Other related speakers include Barcelona City Hall, the Friedrich Miescher Institute from Switzerland and the German healthcare organisation Südharz-Krankenhaus Nordhausen.  SNW Europe 2008 will also feature speakers from Message Labs, BITKOM, Applications Security, TheInfoPro, and Glasshouse Technologies, Arados Consulting and Microsoft.
    
“SNW Europe 2008 will be the place to be for any IT professional in the public sector looking for a single source of information on both mature and new technologies and how these can allow them to meet business and technical challenges in their organisations,” said Paul Trowbridge, SNW Europe marketing director. “The ongoing changes government and other public bodies are facing are reflected in how today’s datacentres are constantly evolving to meet compliance, consolidation and productivity requirements. SNW Europe will offer targeted educational sessions around each of these topics,” Paul continued.
    
The popular SNW Hands-on Lab, a unique environment where end-user delegates can work with industry experts in a classroom setting on some of the latest products and technologies, has been expanded to accommodate the growing requests from students with the addition of a third classroom. The sessions will cover a range of topics such as configuring IP SANs, establishing a virtualized storage environment, managing storage resources and protecting and securing data.
    
A core feature of the conference are the SNIA Tutorials, a series of educational sessions developed by participants in the storage networking industry, including vendors, training companies, analysts, consultants, and end-users. They are intended to present technical and business (IT) issues in a fair and unbiased manner, and are designed to give a consensus view of particular topics, from the viewpoint of the entire industry or a significant segment.            
SNW Europe 2008 will feature an array of sessions to choose from including Green Storage and Data Centres; Server and Storage Virtualization, Server I/O Consolidation Solutions: Storage Resource Management; Data Deduplication, Data Protection and Restoration Technologies, Long-term Retention of Digital Information; Information Risk Management; Information Security and IT Compliance; File System developments and the deployment and Solid State Storage.

A variety of subjects
In summary, at SNW Europe 2008 attendees will be able to learn about how end-users can address their storage challenges in the data centre; find out about the latest technologies and protocols such as Fibre Channel over Ethernet and XAM and issues such as compliance and security. Hear real-world case studies from end-user speakers from across the region; attend the ever-popular vendor-independent SNIA educational tutorials; meet with over 50 of the leading industry players showcasing new storage solutions; test drive the latest technologies in the exclusive Hands-on Lab; and visit the Solutions Showcase to discuss and experience a set of multi-vendor technology demonstrations.
    
The SNW Europe 2008 Platinum sponsors are Brocade, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, IBM, NetApp, Quantum and Oracle.  Gold sponsors include 3PAR, Cisco, CommVault, Emulex, Hitachi GST, LSI, Overland and Pillar Data Systems. For a complete up-to-date listing of participating vendors visit www.snweurope.com
    
SNW Europe is free to attend for all IT end-users and resellers/system integrators. Delegate passes include food and refreshments throughout the conference and evening activities on 27 and 28 October.  

For more information
Register today at www.snweurope.com