Autumn is upon us: the nights are drawing in, the leaves are beginning to turn, the kids have gone back to school ­ and it is time for the UK’s annual Storage Expo event.

With more than 100 vendors and thousands of visitors due to gather in the National Hall at Olympia on Wednesday 15 and Thursday 16 October, Storage Expo 2008 is anticipated to be the largest yet.
Now in its eighth year, the show’s Keynote Programme will reflect the change in data storage and information management landscape.

Highlights will include Storage from the Ground to the Cloud: A Root and Branch Review of Storage at the Royal Horticultural Society, which will address the future of data-proof data storage with a green and scalable infrastructure.
There will be keynotes on how to reduce your data footprint with de-duplication, architecting for efficiency and effectiveness and modular architecture, growing with cluster storage and protecting your data with backup strategies. A selection of technical experts will also be available in the Energy Zone.

Technology use
Among the companies exhibiting are de-duplication vendor Data Domain. Philip Turner, regional director for the UK and Ireland at Data Domain, said: “Storage Expo is a highly efficient platform for us to meet with and educate customers on the technology and the benefits it can bring to their organisations.”

Data Domain will use the event to showcase its new software offering, Retention Lock, alongside some of the vendor’s best practices for VMware, Symantec NBU and Microsoft Exchange.

“We will also focus on how end users are using the technology. We have two major customers ­ Britannia Building Society and Associated News ­ presenting at the event to explain how our solutions have helped them enhance their storage strategy in the real world.”

Mike Stolz vice president for sales and marketing at vendor StorMagic, said: “We will have two major announcements: our VMware certification and our channel partnership with Boston, with whom we are exhibiting at Storage Expo.
“One of my key objectives is to increase exposure of StorMagic’s SM Series of iSCSI SAN solutions. As a channel-only company we are looking to achieve this exposure through our partners.”

Stolz advises resellers to look for solutions that address real problems rather than those products that are a logical development of the technology but are not actually needed.

“Resellers should ensure that when they talk to vendors they look behind the glossy brochures and marketing hype,” he said.
A newcomer to both Storage Expo and the UK market, archiving vendor Tarmin Technologies plans on using the show to seek new partners.
Eric Herzog, vice president for sales at Tarmin Technologies, said: “As a 100 per cent channel-based organisation, we will also be working with one of our UK resellers to generate leads for our product.

Helping hands
“At the same time, we will be recruiting additional resellers for the UK and Europe to work with Tarmin as we launch GridBank.”

The GridBank Platform enables long-term, fixed content data preservation on secondary storage tiers, such as low-cost SATA hard-disk drives and tape libraries.
Herzog expects that with the tough economic backdrop, the spotlight will be on products that clearly deliver a strong return on investment as end users need to justify their budgets.

“Resellers should also look for vendors that will not take business direct and that want to promote their channel partners to their end user customers and prospects,” he added.