As of January 2022, iland is now 11:11 Systems, a managed infrastructure solutions provider at the forefront of cloud, connectivity, and security. As a legacy iland.com blog post, this article likely contains information that is no longer relevant. For the most up-to-date product information and resources, or if you have further questions, please refer to the 11:11 Systems Success Center or contact us directly.
Last week, VMworld 2019 greeted us with open arms at a newly renovated Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco. After a four-year hiatus from the convention center (temporarily held at the Mandalay Bay in Vegas), the return to California was well worth the wait. The keynotes were inspiring, the breakouts were relevant and informative, and the booths – well, aren’t they always the best part?
The team in action
And while the 2019 US show is now officially behind us, it doesn’t mean the experience is over. Far from it. In fact, if you view the US show as a peek into what’s to come in 2020 and beyond, you will see why many view VMworld as the start of a new year of planning. As a VMware Cloud Verified services provider, 11:11 Systems knows a thing or two about planning. We know our customers are always looking forward both in terms of application innovation in the cloud and protecting their business for the future. So, it should not come as a surprise to our many booth visitors that 11:11 came to VMworld to #LevelUP. What do we mean by this? As you might expect, it goes way beyond our awesome booth theme:
SVP, Business Development Dante Orsini with VMBlog
For us, #LevelUP means much more than offering new solutions to our customers, it means improving our partnerships with them. How can we help their businesses thrive? How can we help protect their applications from downtime and data loss? Earning the role as “trusted advisor” is always our goal. This year, we focused our presentations as much on customer education as new offer awareness. First, we made sure our message was available to the masses. 11:11 Chief Strategy Officer Dante Orsini sat down with the VMBlog team right out of the gate to talk about how the IT landscape has changed and how 11:11 has been able to respond and further help customers with their business goals in the cloud. See the video here.
Senior Cloud Technologist, Brian Knudson
During the Solution Exchange hours, we presented every 30 minutes. One of our presentations included Senior Cloud Technologist, Brian Knudtson presenting “Moving to the Cloud: A Journey Worth a Plan and a Guide.” As attendees heard, moving VMware workloads to the cloud is both great for business efficiency fraught with challenges. Brian helped customers understand that vendors who offer cloud services for VMware need to 1) be transparent about the challenges and 2) be prepared to address the challenges including unique, customer-specific challenges.
Next, we had Senior Product Manager, Corey Grone discussing “Better Cybersecurity through Cloud Backup.” Corey’s session could not have been better timed. Cybercrime is a topic we get asked about daily. Corey helped us understand what is at risk and how 11:11 takes a multi-layered approach to defending customer data (and businesses) from threats like ransomware. In addition, he talked about the importance of acknowledging the shared-responsibility model with many SaaS applications – in particular Microsoft Office365.
We were also fortunate to have not one but two of our cloud experts with us in San Francisco this week including Senior Cloud Technologist, Will Urban. Will was our true utility player this week presenting on numerous topics including security, 11:11’s top 5, and LabEngine – a product that won 11:11 Systems “Best of Show” from VMworld in 2018.
Next up was Senior Product Manager, Omar Torres who presented several sessions focused on his specialty, Disaster Recovery as a Service. Specifically, given all the news about hyperscalers joining the DR party, Omar presented his experience and insight into “Choosing the right platform for DRaaS” in the 11:11 booth. This became a daily event for us – and given our focus on DR for VMware workloads as a company, the sessions were often extended with Q&A.
We say it a lot, but it’s important so it bears repeating: one of the things that makes coming to work every day at 11:11 so special is the collaboration we have with our strategic partners. During the show, we had the opportunity to cross-present with our friends at Zerto and Veeam. Omar pulled in the crowd with his session “Simplify the Journey to Cloud“. The session was focused on, you guessed it, 11:11’s focus on the journey to cloud, as much as the destination itself.
Dante Orsini also had a huge showing with the Veeam team presenting the details of our longstanding partnership and our joint GTM benefits. His session “Mission-critical availability and simplified protection in the cloud” highlighted the capabilities our joint partnership with Veeam brings to customers.
We have been collaborating and developing with Veeam for the better part of a decade, meaning ALL data protection services offered by Veeam are available and integrated with 11:11. This includes DR, Backup, Object, etc.
And finally, we had several announcements to share with our customers. First, a major update to our 11:11 Catalyst assessment tool hit the wire early in the week. With this update, customers can accurately answer the question “is the cloud right for my mission-critical application.” Customers download 11:11 Catalyst for free and can immediately assess their application storage, compute, memory, and bandwidth requirements (and much more). This information, quickly leads to a detailed report to determine what resources are needed to meet existing performance requirements. It didn’t take long for our Senior Cloud Solutions Architect Jeff Polczynski to fill up the room with his Catalyst demos! See Dante and Jeff present on 11:11’s story and then Catalyst capabilities.
Overall, it was an incredible show. We hope our customers had as much fun as we did!
Now, it’s back to work to ensure the feedback we received from customers informs our development and our next trip brings results. We look forward to keeping you updated with the latest at
See you in Barcelona!
