Powering The Cloud organiser Bill Dunlop Uprichard, CEO, Angel Business Communications, told CNME the value he places on ensuring the Frankfurt trade show remains industry impartial.
He recognised how the event has gradually adapted to emerging market trends, and attributes that change to its success.
He said, “The main advantage of Powering The Cloud is that it is a vendor-independent invent. I find that vendor-based events tend to become an exercise in self-promotion, whereas this one is endorsed by industry associations like SNIA. A couple of trends have shaped this year’s event; namely security, big data and managed services.
“One of the things we do is help build trust and security between businesses. We do a lot of work with independent analyst houses, and the majority of their research tells us that security and reliability remain pressing issues. First and foremost we hope that the event can educate people, and give them an increased understanding of how their businesses could improve with certain technologies.”
Dunlop acknowledged the event has changed dramatically since its inception. “It’s had to evolve in order to survive. If it hadn’t, it wouldn’t be here anymore,” he said. “Five years ago we formed partnerships with Virtualization World and Datacenter Technologies to emphasise that the event was more than just a storage one, and in future our Event Manager, Carly Stephens, plans to incorporate other areas so that we move with the times. Like other events, we are no longer specific, so that we can feature emerging trends. The process of change has certainly been a gradual one; of evolution, not revolution.”
In light of recent security scandals with the U.S government’s prism programme, Dunlop is not panicked that companies will avoid cloud uptake, “The scandals haven’t really raised an issue in the industry. As of yet there’s no evidence for companies to worry about these developments,” he said.
“The most important thing is that companies do their due diligence as to who they’re leaving their data with. They will always be in control of large parts of their data, but fortunately cloud is flexible in its delivery of how companies manage their data.”
He conceded that the Middle East has catching up to do in terms of infrastructure, but is a fruitful market nonetheless, “There will always be regions that move faster than others. You only need to look at places like the U.K and Scandinavia who are very quick at latching onto certain trends, but the Middle East is certainly an emerging market, so it will catch up very soon,” he said.
