A Fantastic Week at Interop 2008!
As I sat on the plane bound for Interop 2008, I was overwhelmed with feelings of anticipation and excitement for the coming week. While Interop is always an important event for Enterasys, this year it meant so much more. As the chosen InteropNet provider, Enterasys would be providing the backbone and security for Interop 2008; the Enterasys Customer Council (ECC) would be meeting; and we would be celebrating our 25th Anniversary with our customers and partners.
The Enterasys branding experience started upon arrival at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport where more than thirty banners 20 feet tall highlighted our logo, our solutions, and our role in InteropNet. McCarran airport, one of the busiest airports in the world, has been a loyal customer for over a decade – a fact that we shared with every attendee who commented on our advertising at the airport.
Enterasys was everywhere on the Interop show floor. Our booth was the right size and in an easy to find location. Customers, partners and prospects alike commented that the Enterasys booth seemed busy. What they appreciated most is that we had engineers and product managers in the booth to answer technical questions and hear feedback live. Several customers and prospects commented that they didn’t realize how broad the Enterasys product line was until they saw the 12 foot tall graphics showing all the products in a topology and positioning diagram.
In two separate speaking opportunities, Enterasys VP Product Management & Marketing, Barry Cioe shared some thought leadership best practices with over 250 attendees. Several people in the audience indicated they had pressure on their IT staff to do more with less, and appreciated the vendor-neutral, educational approach to Barry’s presentation. Everyone left knowing that Enterasys can align the network with the business cost-effectively.
More than 1,600 people from 1,200 companies worldwide stopped by our booth to have an extended conversation or see a demonstration. Of those 1,200 companies, more than 900 were new prospects that have never done business with Enterasys. Compared to Interop 2007, we increased our number of total contacts by more than 33% and more than doubled our number of new company prospects.
The Enterasys Customer Council (ECC), representing seven vertical industries and six countries, met with Enterasys product managers and executives throughout the ECC meeting to discuss current challenges in IT and how we can continue to provide relevant technology solutions. A report card was presented to the group on how Enterasys has responded to ECC requests and we measured up very well. I will share more details about the ECC meeting in the June issue of Impact.
Wednesday night, Enterasys celebrated our 25th Anniversary with a toast thanking customers, partners and employees at an event 64 stories above the Las Vegas strip. Nearly 700 people joined us throughout the evening. Several prospects commented how much they enjoyed the opportunity to speak with current customers in a casual setting to validate Enterasys’ support quality and product features. There were continuous conversations throughout the night as customers and partners shared their favorite Cabletron/Enterasys memories. Click here to see the online photos that provide further views into the branding we used at the event.
Enterasys is proud of our performance delivering 100% availability and centralized visibility and control as the official InteropNet 2008 backbone and security provider. 2008 saw the largest number of solution providers in the history of the program respond to the RFP to be an official supplier for InteropNet. This was the first time that InteropNet had no firewall for the Class A network (IP address space for 16 million users); and the first time that a single vendor supplied both the network backbone and security infrastructure.
NetSight and Dragon software managed and secured open access to the Internet. InteropNet featured the Enterasys B-Series, C-Series, D-Series, G-Series, N-Series and X-Series switches and routers prioritizing and protecting the world’s largest temporary network, connecting thousands of attendees and hundreds of exhibitors using VoIP and virtualization technologies. Lenny Heymann, General Manager for Interop stated, “This was the first year that I didn’t have to get pulled into a network issue…no news was good news. The volunteers from Enterasys were pleasant, flexible and very engaged.” Click here to watch the Network World interview about InteropNet. Here are some other interesting highlights from InteropNet:
- 26 racks with Enterasys equipment supported 1830 wired connections, over 30,000 IP addresses and more than 9,000 MAC addresses.
- Over 43,000 internal and external active hosts were using InteropNet on the second day of the show…over 18,000 at any one time.
- With over 500,000 daily attacks on InteropNet, Dragon Security Command Console produced daily reports of the top assets targeted for attack based on magnitude of impact, and the top 10 sources of attacks.
- One exhibiting vendor initiated an attack against the InteropNet backbone as part of their demo. Enterasys pinpointed the source and throttled the attack bandwidth. The vendor commented this was the first time they had ever been caught using their attack tools.
The D-Series switch (see page 4) was especially appreciated by the InteropNet staff who used them as syrup/butter warmers for pancakes each morning (the D-Series is designed to dissipate heat by transferring it to the metal case). You could also see our latest solutions for distributed IPS & SIEM security, data center virtualization, HD Video, VoIP and wireless connectivity.
Interop 2008 was a very important investment for Enterasys to raise awareness and generate new leads. The combination of branding at the airport, InteropNet success, speaking opportunities, booth demonstrations, the ECC meeting, our discussions with Network World, and our 25th Anniversary event combined to make it a very memorable week.
It was the best week I have had since joining Enterasys two years ago. I was proud of all of our employees who worked to make Interop a success and everyone else who is helping Enterasys be a great company again.