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August 2018, Vol. 17, No. 5

Storage conferences aren't what they used to be

Storage "show season" 2018 recently concluded with a bevy of conferences in May and June. That packed lineup of user shows got me thinking about how storage conferences have changed over the years -- and not for the better. When I started covering storage full-time in 2003, there were a handful of big yearly industrywide shows that held value for storage pros. There were spring and fall Storage Networking World (SNW) conferences, and there were at least two Storage Decisions each year run by my company, TechTarget. SNW -- co-sponsored by Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) -- was industry- and vendor-focused while Storage Decisions attracted a good end-user crowd. There were also a few big vendor events then, such as EMC World and Veritas Vision, but the SNW and Storage Decisions shows were the major gathering places for the storage world. The 2008 recession helped alter the show landscape. Companies cut back their travel budgets and staffing, making it harder to send people to conferences. The independent storage ...

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