May 6 and 7 in Tirol, Austria, Dell Services hosted the 2011 Annual Dell Innovationstage Conference (Innovation Days). Influential IT leaders from customers in the region including Audi and Daimler Group gathered to share their experience and to discuss strategies for innovation in an increasingly virtual era.
After a welcome address by Dell Services Managing Director Andreas Stein, Forrester’s Pascal Matzke delivered a keynote address exploring how technology can support business innovation. With 150 million smartphones and 70 million tablets expected in the US by 2015 and the impact of social technology and cloud computing, traditional business cannot ignore the ongoing IT trends. Pascal used the example of Private pilots in the US who now have FAA approval to use tablets to carry inflight notes. As a result, their commercial colleagues are demanding the same. His view is that it is no longer a conversation about ‘technology’ or ‘applications’ – but a fundamental conversation about process. In the virtual era, CIOs will become service brokers aligned to the needs of the business, rather than infrastructure providers.
During presentations and workshops throughout the event, Dell customers shared their perspectives on IT strategy, efficient IT and process optimization. SAP, Dell and Microsoft shared their roadmaps for cloud and mobility. Dell also showcased how technology from Compellent can support virtualization in the data centre.
Juergen Flemming, Head of IT at Vinzenz von Paul Kliniken talked about how rapid change in the healthcare sector is providing many challenges for IT. For healthcare delivery organisations, concern about the impact on hospital IT operations can create a hesitancy to change. His view was that innovation in healthcare is dependent on implementing comprehensive architectures based on open systems that are strategically aligned to the needs of the organisation.
Day two started with a keynote from Dell’s Martin Yates. “Cloud will be with us for the rest of our lives,” he said, “it is here to stay”. He talked about the end-user driven IT revolution that is putting further pressure on IT, which in turn is leading more organisations to take a serious look at the cloud computing. Organizations need to understand that cloud is not simple outsourcing in the traditional sense. Advanced virtualisation is an important foundation for cost reduction, and an important step towards harnessing the cloud to enable enterprise agility and lean operational expenditure.
Completing the theme of innovation, both Audi and Daimler showcased new technology in their A6, A8, C-Class T, SLK and S-Class models respectively.
Dell also hosted a technology showcase, giving delegates a ‘hands on’ opportunity to try out devices from Dell to support mobility in the virtual era including Streak 5, Streak 7 and the new Streak 10, along with Venue Smartphone and Venue Pro Smartphone along with Inspiron Duo. Various Notebooks were also showcased including E6420, E6320, E5420 and E3 XT.
The real value of Innovationstage comes from the exchange of ideas between technology professionals. It provides a relaxed environment where our customers from different industries share their experience with each other. Much of the agenda is driven by our customers and it helps us to build closer relationships with them.