With everyone being pressed to do more with less, the time spend out of the office needs to be both productive and valuable. With that in mind, the organizers of the iTech Toronto Conference and Trade Show presented an impressive list of speakers and topics which were sure to engage with the industry professionals who visited the event. The presenters came from some of the hottest sectors of the IT industry. Data security, blockchain, e-commerce, website builders, big data and more. All of the speakers had an important message to tell that included practical implementation tips that visitors could take back and immediately implement in their own organizations. The chance to gain insights into these sectors from leading experts proved to be a big draw at iTech. Indeed, some sessions were standing room only and the Q&A sessions extended beyond the time limit of some of the sessions.
Alteeve’s CTO – Madison Kelly – is recognized as one of the most influential thought leaders in the high availability server space. Her talk “Views From The Edge” addressed challenges associated with the proliferation of IoT devices as more and more organizations choose not to build a bigger pipe to pull data back to a central DC for processing. Also known as “Edge Computing”, it pushes computing applications, data, and services away from centralized nodes to the edges of a network. It enables analytics and data gathering to occur at the source of the data. Beyond the logistics of moving compute to the edge, there’s also the question of maintaining skilled IT staff at the edge to run the systems.
During her presentation, Madison outlined a 4 point plan to deal with the growth of IoT data and to wrest back control of IT at the edge all the while keeping IT staffing needs to a minimum.
Madison’s recommendations were as follows:
1. Seek out systems that can think and act for themselves. Autonomous platforms reduce or eliminate altogether the need for IT staff at the edge.
2. Focus on taming the Big Data beast instead of building a fatter pipe or investing in a sprawling infrastructure at the edge. The right server solution will accomplish both of these goals, save money and simplify IT administration.
3. Plan for growth. Data analysis requirements at the edge are only going to grow as operations become more decentralized and as IoT devices proliferate. Choose your IT infrastructure wisely so that it will grow with the increased data storage and computational needs of the business.
4. Make everything highly available. To compensate for the lack of skilled IT staff at the edge to restore failed components or restart systems, choose a resilient high availability server platform to preserve uptime.
Madison’s message – while simple at its core – was very strategic and customer focused. Judging by the engagement of the audience, questions asked and subsequent feedback; this was a message that really resonated with the iTech audience. It’s really a credit to the iTech event organizers that they bring together so many industry thought leaders to discuss issues of the day and to present practical value-added solutions.