Event Recap
RECAP | 2019 North America Network Fall Conference - Reston - VA - USA [PRESENTATIONS PROVIDED VIA COLLECTION LINK BELOW]
The 2019 North America Fall Conference was held in Reston, Virginia, USA, 13-16 October 2019. The event attended by over 100 Network members and invited guests.
The conference kicked off with an executive perspective from Martin McCarthy, 451 Group Chairman and CEO. Key messages from Martin’s presentation were the only constant is change, and that the Network and Uptime Institute can play a major role in helping companies evolve, avoid outages, and continue to move toward digital resiliency. The conference theme of Proactive vs. Reactive was addressed by Matt Stansberry, VP North America for UI, with the key message being that training, learning, and peer experience will help you weather the stalemate the industry appears to be in. The keynote address from Chris Crosby of Compass Datacenters appeared to resonate with the attendees as he talked about how data center infrastructure is rapidly becoming the new utility.
Other Day 1 highlights included presentations on real world impacts of climate change from Greenpeace, and David Gallaher from the National Snow & ice Data Center, as well as an entire conference segment dedicated to data center staffing and skills issues. We heard from Kelly Morgan of 451 Research on the state of the Northern Virginia data center market, which as you can imagine is still very bullish ranking again as #1 globally. Also, excellent member presentations were provided by BB&T on reducing electrical infrastructure risk, and RagingWire on human performance in data center operations. During the lunch break, 5 roundtable sessions were conducted on topics ranging from energized work, staffing, batteries and NFPA 855, integrated monitoring, and enterprise vs. colo. vs. cloud. The day concluded with the annual awards reception honoring member companies that achieved another full year of uptime. Plus, we honored AT&T as the recipient of this year’s Larry Rushing Award for demonstrating outstanding Network participation, engagement, and involvement.
Day 2 was Data center Tour Day! Excellent tours were provided Iron Mountain, RagingWire, Sabey, and STACK. Afterwards, feedback sessions were conducted for each of the tours. The day concluded with a presentation from Sabey on KyotoCooling compressor failure issues, and the Technical Roundtable happy hour where attendees reviewed, discussed, and debated the findings from the previous day’s lunch roundtable sessions.
Day 3 wrapped up the conference with a half-day of more excellent presentations. The day started with a keynote on the impact of international regulatory trends by guest speaker Alex Howard, and was followed by Schneider Electric educating us on how data centers will be a critical piece for delivery of 5G. Fantastic member presentations were provided by Fannie Mae on cyber security threats and protecting your critical infrastructure, as well as by Iron Mountain on how we can’t forget about the critical data center fundamentals because uptime starts with solid foundational practices. The day concluded with UI presentations on resiliency in the age of the cloud, and a UI presentation on abnormal incident report (AIR) trending.
Overall, the conference was extremely well received and provided a perfect opportunity for Network members to engage and interact with each other on a large variety of relevant topics.
Thank you again to the host companies that volunteered to provide tours – Iron Mountain, RagingWire, Sabey, and STACK!
Looking forward to seeing you all at the 2020 Spring Conference in Northern California, hosted by Kaiser Permanente and AT&T, and presently scheduled for the week of March 30. Official dates will be announced once meeting and hotel accommodations are confirmed.
The conference kicked off with an executive perspective from Martin McCarthy, 451 Group Chairman and CEO. Key messages from Martin’s presentation were the only constant is change, and that the Network and Uptime Institute can play a major role in helping companies evolve, avoid outages, and continue to move toward digital resiliency. The conference theme of Proactive vs. Reactive was addressed by Matt Stansberry, VP North America for UI, with the key message being that training, learning, and peer experience will help you weather the stalemate the industry appears to be in. The keynote address from Chris Crosby of Compass Datacenters appeared to resonate with the attendees as he talked about how data center infrastructure is rapidly becoming the new utility.
Other Day 1 highlights included presentations on real world impacts of climate change from Greenpeace, and David Gallaher from the National Snow & ice Data Center, as well as an entire conference segment dedicated to data center staffing and skills issues. We heard from Kelly Morgan of 451 Research on the state of the Northern Virginia data center market, which as you can imagine is still very bullish ranking again as #1 globally. Also, excellent member presentations were provided by BB&T on reducing electrical infrastructure risk, and RagingWire on human performance in data center operations. During the lunch break, 5 roundtable sessions were conducted on topics ranging from energized work, staffing, batteries and NFPA 855, integrated monitoring, and enterprise vs. colo. vs. cloud. The day concluded with the annual awards reception honoring member companies that achieved another full year of uptime. Plus, we honored AT&T as the recipient of this year’s Larry Rushing Award for demonstrating outstanding Network participation, engagement, and involvement.
Day 2 was Data center Tour Day! Excellent tours were provided Iron Mountain, RagingWire, Sabey, and STACK. Afterwards, feedback sessions were conducted for each of the tours. The day concluded with a presentation from Sabey on KyotoCooling compressor failure issues, and the Technical Roundtable happy hour where attendees reviewed, discussed, and debated the findings from the previous day’s lunch roundtable sessions.
Day 3 wrapped up the conference with a half-day of more excellent presentations. The day started with a keynote on the impact of international regulatory trends by guest speaker Alex Howard, and was followed by Schneider Electric educating us on how data centers will be a critical piece for delivery of 5G. Fantastic member presentations were provided by Fannie Mae on cyber security threats and protecting your critical infrastructure, as well as by Iron Mountain on how we can’t forget about the critical data center fundamentals because uptime starts with solid foundational practices. The day concluded with UI presentations on resiliency in the age of the cloud, and a UI presentation on abnormal incident report (AIR) trending.
Overall, the conference was extremely well received and provided a perfect opportunity for Network members to engage and interact with each other on a large variety of relevant topics.
Thank you again to the host companies that volunteered to provide tours – Iron Mountain, RagingWire, Sabey, and STACK!
Looking forward to seeing you all at the 2020 Spring Conference in Northern California, hosted by Kaiser Permanente and AT&T, and presently scheduled for the week of March 30. Official dates will be announced once meeting and hotel accommodations are confirmed.
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