Partnering and the new style of IT

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The bright lights of Las Vegas shone down onto HP resellers, distributors and solution providers from around the world at the HP Global Partner Conference (GPC). The annual event, which took place over four days in March, is the foremost forum for channel partners to gain insight into HP's newest technologies and their strategic role in bringing them to the public.

Events such as these are invaluable in creating a roadmap as to how we at Aptronics can adapt strategically to the shifting dynamics of the IT landscape. This year's conference highlighted the new style of IT and its role in accelerating growth.

Looking past the announced launches of new storage and converged systems solutions, the key takeaway was the importance of a strong technological and knowledge foundation in being able to drive business. Four key pillars were identified as essential in empowering the new style of IT: cloud, mobility, security and big data.

Security

IT enterprises will be well acquainted with these topics, some more than others. Security in particular is a pressing concern for CIOs struggling to find ways of balancing the needs of a more mobile and independent workforce with an effective security strategy.

We believe security is a strategic pillar of growth within Aptronics and our partnership with HP allows us to deliver industry-leading security solutions to our clients. HP's security portfolio serves nine out of the ten largest banks worldwide and has over 5,000 credentialed security experts at its disposal.

Mobility

The mobility pillar, which encompasses aspects such as device security, data management, app development and connectivity is another important focus area. In South Africa, we're seeing a major upturn in demand for wireless technologies, which paves the way for the mainstream adoption of virtualisation solutions. Our own portfolio includes broad capabilities in virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), which allows for scalable and risk-free deployments of secure virtual workspaces.

Cloud

Cloud is an especially controversial topic of discussion in the IT space. HP expanded the dialogue around cloud in another recent event, the HP Helion Conference held in Dubai. As one of only three HP Cloud Builder partners in the country, we find conferences such as these essential in helping us to refine our approach.

The conference presented an opportunity to discuss the different cloud delivery models available within the Helion stack, such as CloudSystem and how different companies could benefit from each model. One discussion of note was how the OpenStack nature of Helion could open the gateway for customers to enter the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) spaces.

A theme that emerged from the conference was how these bold new technologies and delivery models are already being embraced by customers. Far from being theoretical, there are enterprises in Europe that have deployed OpenStack and cloud system technologies and are enjoying a much more agile and efficient organisation as a result.

While South Africa is not yet at that stage of maturity, our own observations are that cloud delivery models such as OpenStack are rapidly gaining momentum. At our Cloud Centre of Excellence, we regularly give demonstrations around the value of IaaS and SaaS to interested parties. We've managed to create great awareness around the subject and a few of our clients have started to implement OpenStack within their testing environments.

Ultimately, it's impossible to walk away from these two conferences and not see the common thread: that partners are key to making HP's business-first vision of IT a reality. It's an exciting time to be an HP channel partner and play such a strategic role.