Mark Walbank, Senior Technical Consultant, Comms-care
After two years of unpredictability, 2022 looks set to be a year of opportunity for partners, which I think we’ll all agree is very much welcome. But with opportunity comes competition, and an increased rate of change.
It’s a challenge that my Comms-care colleagues and I relish; we’re always looking for ways to innovate while continuing to deliver great outcomes for our customers. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I’m so excited about EMPOWER ONLINE 2022. It’s the perfect platform for me to gain value and knowledge on cutting-edge VMware solutions, which I can then weave into the conversations I have with customers.
I often find myself going deep into the technical weeds of technology when interacting with customers, so that knowledge is incredibly important in my day to day. The beauty of EMPOWER is that you can pretty much be as targeted as you want in the sessions you attend, given the sheer range on offer. For those in more technically-oriented roles like me, the opportunity to hear from experts who essentially wrote the book on the technology you work with is simply unmissable. But those in sales or marketing roles can also create their own track to get the skills and strategic insights they need. There really is something for everyone.
It’s all about establishing what’s valuable for you. From my perspective, it’s about discovering new use cases for VMware’s latest innovations and expanding my knowledge on how to position, adapt and expand on these products and solutions. I focus closely on the implementation and design of VMware’s NSX in my role, and the lab sessions and demos will be hugely informative; Romain Decker’s ‘Beyond Network Automation’ session in particular looks like the kind of technical deep dive that will be incredibly useful. On the more strategic side, the sessions exploring the load balancer challenges faced by enterprises – and how to solve them – look like they will be incredibly insightful, too.
There’s also a great benefit to be had from attending competitors’ sessions, in my experience. In the past, they’ve proved to be a perfect forum for getting a competitive view of the world and learning what the best in class is up to.
There are so many sessions I want to delve into that in all honesty, I’m grateful the event is virtual! It gives me the perfect flexibility to engage with the content in a way that works for me, so I don’t miss out on vital knowledge due to my inability to be in two places at once (I’m still working on that one).
It is very rare to get such a candid view behind the scenes of a vendor’s technology, and rich strategic insight into what its products can do. EMPOWER is the perfect platform for acquiring direct technical expertise and getting a competitive view of the dynamic world of technology from within the comfort of my own four walls. Without doubt, it’s the one channel event on the calendar that I simply can’t miss. So I’ll see you there!
