July 13, 2011 thinkASG shows off its completely revamped (BPIC) Business partner Innovation Center.

Yesterday was a fantastic event for thinkASG customers, prospects and local IBM teams to come and see our “Solutions” oriented thinkASG BPIC. With a complete refresh of technologies too numerous to mention, we devoted yesterday to highlight our latest IBM Storage focused solutions.

The day kicked off at 10AM with thinkASG customers and prospects eager to see live demonstrations of Storage Virtualization and Data Protection solutions. From 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. demonstrations of IBM’s Storwize V7000 kicked off the event. Demonstrating its ease of use, configuration and its rich standard feature set. We showed how easy it is to set up and virtualize other storage systems into a seamless, powerful, and easy to manage solution. From here we demonstrated Storwize V7000’s connectivity to IBM POWER7 Servers and IBM xSeries servers at the same time. Again, showing how easy this solution integrates into the real world environments of our end users.

We then showed off IBM’s Data Protection solutions. These included IBM’s powerful ProtecTIER Virtual Tape Solutions with data deduplication. Demonstrations showed ProtecTIER protecting IBM iSeries using BRMS and IBM TSM solutions at the same time revealing how easy IBM Storage solutions integrate and complement each other. Also highlighted was the IBM LTFS Solution Suite. LTFS stands for Linear Tape File Systems which has tape back in the forefront of the data center. This open solution allows all customers the opportunity to have an easy to use and manage, highly portable storage solution to archive and exchange data with other locations. This truly is an exciting solution from IBM that gives our customers a very innovative way to solve some key data protection solutions while utilizing the most efficient, and green data storage method available today.

These demonstrations showed IBM Storage solutions in real world environments where end users saw just how they could benefit from each one. Our efforts to revamp our BPIC continue. Soon we will be able to show off the IBM Real Time Compression Appliance and its unique value proposition. We expect it shortly and look forward to conducting our next BPIC Open House in early August highlighting this technology.

We had a steady stream of end users and more IBM folks then I realized worked in SoCal come thru on tours. In the afternoon attendees saw several Storage related sessions that provided them with additional information and Q&A from teams of technical experts.

First up was the IBM DS Storage Line review that I have to thank Barry Kushin and Bob Daniel from NetApp / LSI as they provided a great technical discussion of DS3XXX, DS5XXX Storage solutions and DS roadmap presentations.

Following Barry was IBM’s Randy Johnson – Senior IT Storage Specialist. Randy provided his lively and informative Storwize V7000 overview. Randy provided a great deal of detail on the rich feature set that comes standard with the Storwize V7000. I know it was easy for Randy to travel from the 117 degree weather in Phoenix to the cool 82 degrees that we enjoyed in SoCal yesterday.

The real hit of the day was when Ray De La Cruz – Sr. Technical Sales Specialist for Open Systems Tape showed of the You Tube video “ Tape Sucks” by Crossroads. This brought home a point that while people joke about a technology as old as I am, Tape has come a long way and is being reinvented with IBM’s LTFS, Linear Tape File System. This really brings openness to data protection and is a technology that you will see incorporated in many of thinkASG solutions. Many thanks to Ray De La Cruz for his in-depth and lively review of this solution for our audience.

I’d like to make very special mention about Mike Mehrkish, a key IBM storage partner resource that without his drive and persistence, this event would not have been achieved. He supported us in every way and without his assistance our clients and partners would not have had the awesome opportunity to see IBM’s storage solutions running live in our BPIC in July.

Additional thanks go out to Jessica Johnson for her role in introducing thinkASG to this technology several months ago. The local IBM ProtecTIER team provided a great deal of support and I thank Jessica Johnson, Brian Harris and Shangpin Baugh for their roles in making ProtecTIER a highlight in our BPIC. They have provided training, support and worked closely with thinkASG technical resources in architecting ProtecTIER Data Protection Solutions for our end users. This event was a great success and I want to offer the opportunity for anyone, end user or partner, to visit our offices for a tour of our Business Partner Innovation Center and the rich suite of solutions that I am proud to say does not exist at any other IBM partner in SoCal.

Last, but not least this event was a success because of the incredible efforts of the thinkASG team. Our dedicated team of technical resources worked night and day over the preceding weeks to implement this technology refresh in our BPIC for demonstration at our open house. Everyone in the company had a hand in the execution of this event working hard to ensure our end users and partners have a valueable experience when visting our office. I personally want to say thank you to the thinkASG management and ownership team for allowing me to participate in this success.

I look forward to showing off our Technologies and Solutions so please contact your thinkASG Sales Executive so we can arrange your tour.

Thank You;

Mike Lehrer