SNW Europe – Snapshot of the Storage Industry in Europe?

Just recovering from an exhausting few days in Frankfurt at this year’s SNW Europe, so I thought I’d share my impressions while they are still fresh.

 First of all, there seemed to be a real air of optimism around the show. The “quality delegates” (i.e., non-vendor) attendance was up 11% on last year, and as usual the demographic was technically-savvy IT executives.  IT attendees were predominantly German, but there was also significant IT attendance from Europe at large (I talked to IT execs from Germany, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland. Italy, and Spain).  As usual, there was significant pan-European press and analyst contingent, with 59 press from 13 countries in attendance. 

 The theme of the show managed to retain its predominant focus on Storage while embracing broader Data Center and Virtualization topics and hot new IT trends – for example there was a well-attended Cloud Summit.  There was also a good mix of keynotes from vendors and leading analysts (the Steve Duplessie and Ken Male presentations were particularly good), and educational sessions – as you can see from the agendas for Tuesday and Wednesday.  Also, see here for a listing of the NetApp presenters.

 You can also get a sense of the buzz around the show from the Twitter traffic during the week: #SNWE and #SNWEurope.

 There has been a significant shake-up of the trade media and events business over the past year – as demonstrated by the evolution of Storage Expo into a general IT event (oops – it didn’t evolve in that direction – here’s the correct link!).  Consequently the success of SNW Europe has made it the leading conference for the European Storage industry.  A great show for IT attendees (with high quality presentations), and the leading show for vendors looking to underscore their leadership credentials in the EMEA storage market.