For months I’ve been following the evolution of HP’s NFV strategy. I’m happy to say that on December 2nd and 3rd I’ll be attending the HP Discover 2014 event in Barcelona for an even deeper dive. While there I’m part of a panel entitled “The New Business of the Network: Network Functions Virtualization” (9:30 AM to 10:30 AM on the NFV track). HP luminaries Saar Gillai (SVP and COO of HP Cloud and GM of HP NFV) and Prodip Sen (CTO of the HP NFV business unit and former chairman of the ETSI NFV ISG).
During this panel we’re going to take a very objective and perhaps sometimes a bit controversial view of the NFV space, throwing in comments from the perspective of the standards people, a vendor, and an industry curmudgeon (me). I’m particularly happy to be joining Saar and Prodip for this because Prodip has guided the ETSI NFV process through its critical formative period, and Saar is the only head of an NFV vendor program who is a cloud guy, not a network guy. If you want a broad and realistic view of NFV, please join us for the session and ask questions during the public Q&A.
HP has a track on NFV at their event, and I’m planning on hitting the other sessions on it. If you’re an operator interested in what NFV can do—and do today—I recommend you attend too. The topics are all important—the priority in virtualizing functions, the collision of IT and networking and how that changes services and infrastructure, the union of SDN and NFV. All of this discussion is happening in the context of the most credible NFV implementation available from a major vendor—network or IT. I’ve blogged often on the quality of HP’s approach and I’m looking forward to learning more about it.
Which means I’m at this event to attend sessions and assess HP’s strategy. I’d love to say “Hello!” to you as we move between sessions or to chat on a break, I’m not going to be setting up any appointments or meetings while I’m attending.