EMC World
2-5 May 2016
Las Vegas
Attendees at EMC World come to find out what’s next in the
world of storage infrastructure. There’s no lack of things going on here, with keynote addresses from IT stars, handson product demonstrations, hundreds of technical sessions
on every nuance of IT life, instructor-led vLab sessions and
of course, networking galore.
Last year saw EMC working on delivering solutions based
on the ‘Third Platform’ which includes cloud and mobile
technology, as well as introducing converged infrastructure
products such as XtremIO 4.0, VMAX3, VxRack and Data
Domain DD9500.
hundreds of sessions.
At WPC, partners
learn about Microsoft’s roadmap
for the upcoming
year, network and
build connections,
share best practices, experience
the latest product
innovations, and
learn new skills and
techniques. There
are also keynote
addresses from Microsoft executives,
featured speakers,
business-track specific offerings, and
Last year Microsoft introduced the Office 365 Enterprise
Suite called ‘E5’ as well as an expansion to the Cloud
Solution Provider programme (CSP). As one of the world’s
premier technology companies, it’s always interesting to
see what will be unveiled at this conference, and 2016
should be no different.
VMworld
28 August - 1 September 2016
Las Vegas
17 - 20 October 2016
Barcelona
VMworld has earned a reputation within the industry as having one of the biggest IT conferences, consistently attracting over 20 000 attendees. And while the emphasis is firmly
on all things virtualisation, with headline speakers, breakout
sessions, panels, exhibit hall, and hands-on labs, the fun
aspect is definitely not excluded, with headline bands in
previous years including Faithless, The Black Keys, Imagine Dragons, The Killers and INXS.
For those who can’t make it to the US in August, there’s
also a version hosted in Europe later on in the year.
Big announcements at last year’s events included the introduction of VMware NSX for vSphere 6.2, VMware vCenter
SRM, VMware Virtual SAN 6.1 and VMware vCloud Air,
a hybrid cloud platform based on VMware vSphere that
enables seamless movement of VMs between the cloud
and on-premise data centres directly from a user’s vCenter
Server console.
Microsoft Worldwide Partner
Conference (WPC)
10 - 14 July 2016
Toronto
The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, commonly
abbreviated to WPC, is a conference held annually by Microsoft Corporation for its partner community.
46 | www.firstdistribution.co.za
Oracle OpenWorld
San Francisco
18 - 22 September 2016
Held annually in San Francisco,
Oracle OpenWorld is billed as an annual Oracle convention for business
decision-makers, IT management and line-of-business
end users.