LT PACT 2008 - Day 2

• By Anastasia Tubanos on June 26, 2008

•   Digg
    Delicious
    Reddit
    Newsvine
    Stumbleupon
    Twitter
  Facebook

  (close)

  From:

  To:

  (close)
  Share | Send | Print | (0) Comments

Although Thursday was the first day with actual sessions, it was technically the second day of the event, so don't worry. You didn't miss a re-cap of Day 1 because there really wasn't conferencing, per se, that happened on Day 1. Except for a cocktail party, which you can read about here.

Day 2 kicked off with an opening presentation by LayeredTech's new CEO Jack Finlayson, where he took us though on all the MAJOR changes that have been going on at LayeredTech, like the new additions to the executive team (including himself, of course), the consistent financial growth (he said around five percent growth month-to-month), new offerings to customers through deepened partner relationships, like the recent Hyper-V announcement with Microsoft, and of course, the strategy behind the FastServers.net acquisition and what they brought to the table for LayeredTech's customer-base.

A snapshot of Jack Finlayson, LayeredTech CEO, during his opening presentation.

He also pointed out the new logo and name to the audience. I'm still trying to get a hold of a good image to give you an accurate understanding of what I've been describing. But I'll post one as soon as I get it! I did want to elaborate a bit on my previous description though (a stylized "L" and "T" put together to form a blue square on top of black line layers) by adding that the "black line layers" are supposed to be a stack of servers.

As for why the company decided to make this change now? Jack says it happened particularly because of the FastServers acquisition and wanting to develop a logo that not only embraced what both LayeredTech and FastServers were about, but to portray an image that was more professional and would reflect its dedication to managed hosting, an area of the industry Jack says the company will be moving towards more and more, with a particular interest on the enterprise market. Not to say the company won't continue to be focused on its current customer-base of SMBs, but it seems focusing on managed services for the enterprise market is a theme that has permeated quite a few of the sessions today...

Although I don't usually comment on how entertaining or yawn-worthy a session was, I believe Jack's presentation deserves a bit of attention, simply because it was effectively engaging even though it was at eight in the morning. Jack is a pretty funny man. Like Billy Crystal, dry-humor funny. He also wasn't afraid to poke fun at himself, which is always appreciated as a member of the audience. It was also interesting that he took his presentation to an "analog" level at one point by literally getting out a white board and using a red marker to draw a diagram to support his discussion on the three areas companies try to compete on: technology, quality and support and price. And the fact that he peppered his discussion with amusing little anecdotes along the way made it particularly memorable.

Jack had much more to say on his vision for LayeredTech, which we got in a video interview with him on WHIRtv, so look for that in the coming weeks.

A snapshot of James Staten, Principal Analyst - Forrester Research, during his keynote presentation, "Cloud/Grid Computing: A Classic Disruptive Technology."

I won't get too in depth with the keynote on Cloud Computing as a Disruptive Technology made by James Staten, the analyst from Forrester Research, but I will say he had a LOT of interesting things to say around the idea of cloud computing, why it was a disruptive technology, who was using it and how (since Enterprise IT, the primary market, has been reluctant to embrace it), and where he saw it heading in the next three to five years. We asked him to discuss all this in a WHIRtv interview as well, which we will be bringing you soon.

Day 3 of LT Pact continues tomorrow so stay tuned for more thoughts from the event in the coming days.

In the meantime though, check out some of the pics Candice has been taking at the event. More to come on that front as well!

• (0) Comments
• View Post

• Print | (0) Comments

OLDER: Customers Need Technology Updates

|

NEWER: Are online contracts binding?