Today, we bring you a special account written by Brian McEvilly, Frontline Managing Director – who recently had the privilege of attending HPE’s exclusive ‘Executive-only’ event out in Dubai.
‘Frontline was recently invited by HPE to attend a Managed Service Provider (MSP), ‘Executives-only’ event in Dubai. The purpose of the visit was to bring a variety of MSPs from around the world together, where, at a single location and as a collective, could openly discuss the MSP landscape, challenges, experiences and levels of innovation evolving within the MSP sector.
It also provided an ideal opportunity to share our experiences with HPE, in an attempt to collectively raise the bar for service and quality of MSP’s around the world.
The presentations and discussion points ranged from traditional ‘cloud services’, HPE offerings into the MSP market, public and private cloud (including trends), automation, security, artificial intelligence, data analytics and reporting, VDI, storage, backup and recovery, risk management, GPUaaS, sustainability and innovation. The time was blended between presentations, round table/open discussion as well as one-to-one conversations with HPE and their sponsors who made the event possible (including NVIDIA, Nutanix and Cohesity).
This was a jam-packed two-day event and exceptionally well organised, catering for all of the attendees’ needs. HPE staff and those in attendance were generous with their time, knowledge and experience and after each full day of business, a few of the local sights (including the ‘Address Sky View’ in front of the Burj Khalifa, Dubai Autodrome, Atlantis The Royal) were visited to add balance to each day. It was during these time periods where some of the more engaging and insightful discussions were held (with HPE staff and other attendees), sharing experience, solutions to common problems and also discussing and reviewing the wide variety of services MSPs have in common (as well as those that can help differentiate us).
Whilst traveling through Dubai, other famous sights and landmarks such as the Burj Al Arab and the Museum of the Future were seen in passing, highlighting the spectacular skyline, sights and splendour that Dubai has to offer – not to mention absolute attention to detail and focus on quality and service everywhere we went.
As a collective, we found commonality on challenges and outcomes, problems and solutions, legacy and innovation.
Whilst the event certainly showcased HPE’s (and their sponsors) pedigree, capability and innovation in the hardware, software, data, AI and enablement space, it also managed to create a unique environment for a number of MSPs, from a broad spectrum of geographies and in a highly competitive market, to meet, discuss their journeys and collaborate.
Whilst the backdrop was stunning, the true value was the collaboration, networking and generosity to share knowledge amongst one another to help push the services we collectively provide to our customers, to the next level, underpinned by a great vendor and partner, in HPE.’
Brian McEvilly, Managing Director
