ManageFusion day-one keynote starts with a bang
The ManageFusion Las Vegas day-one keynote began with a display of energy and Cirque du Soleil-style acrobatics that only Las Vegas could provide.
Greg Butterfield, Symantec group president, after an entrance surrounded by acrobats, was Steve Morton’s first guest. Greg commented on a continued market trend toward converging security, storage, and systems management. To facilitate this convergence, traditional Altiris customers will be pleased to know that the Altiris endpoint management architecture is being leveraged by the company to enable the Symantec collaborative architecture.
Up next, as part of a roundtable discussion, Peter Varhol, Redmond Magazine executive editor noted, “The predominant theme in IT today is the user. Users, users, and users. Everything we’re seeing and doing is directed their way.”
Also part of the roundtable, Michael Dortch, Aberdeen Group senior analyst, added, “If anything significant has happened, it’s that technology has become too important to be left only in the hands of IT people. Business people are taking a larger role in IT, because it has become more critical to them. IT professionals need to better engage with their counterparts in the business, or gain necessary skills to insert themselves into business-level decisions.”
Michael added that cost reduction and the need for more productive, agile and responsive technology solutions are all key.
“We see companies worried about recession and economic stability,” Michael noted. “Yet they’re also worried about growth. Businesses still want to grow, they just don’t want to spend any money to do it.”
Gregory Bryant, VP and General Manager of the Digital Office Platform Division of Intel’s Business Client Group, then joined Steve on stage and noted the progress Intel and Symantec are making together with Intel vPro.
“We have more than 30 million units deployed. Gartner is endorsing vPro as a great solution. People who are implementing and using vPro are seeing ROI in less than 18 months,” he maintained.
As an example, Ted Wilkinson, Bank of New York / Mellon Bank VP of regional services noted that his company, which supports 47,000 employees worldwide, is using Symantec and Intel technology together to meet a new set of needs. The company is combining Altiris Client Management Suite with Intel vPro hardware as a solution that will help them support their end users remotely.
“Do you have to go vPro all the way?” Steve wondered.
“Not at all,” Ted responded. “We’re actually going ‘semi pro’. We really like the fact that with Altiris, we can manage both vPro and non-vPro machines together. The extra tools to support vPro simply populate the management console as appropriate. It’s been very instrumental in helping us meet our new IT goals.”
Software Virtualization Solution continues to be a hot topic. Doug Coombs, Symantec director of product management, pointed out that SVS going forward will use application virtualization and streaming technology together to quickly and remotely deliver applications and data from the back end to the endpoint, cache it, and then use it as needed.
Ed Reynolds, Dell senior manager, OpenManage product planning, pointed to existing and upcoming integration between Altiris endpoint management solutions and Dell hardware.
Rick Maddox, Symantec product line manager, demonstrated the ability to use the new Altiris Workflow Solution to drive a complex hardware request. Mobile notifications, email approvals, permissions, inventory checks, and procurement. The entire process can now be automated across business disciplines, for IT and for the end user.
Dwain Kinghorn, Symantec VP of engineering, noted that this week marks the one year anniversary since the Symantec acquisition of Altiris. Milestones since the acquisition include rapid integration between the Altiris endpoint management platform and Symantec’s Backup Exec System Recovery and Symantec Endpoint Protection.
As always, ManageFusion is shaping up to be a great source of information and news from Symantec, customers and our partners.