Whitehat Sponsors a Desktop Virtualization and Mobility Event

By now, you are probably aware of Whitehat’s VMXpo event on Wednesday, Sept. 4^th here in Austin. This event will focus on these two areas of the IT industry, but it will do something else that is very unusual… it will have specialized content both for enterprise-class customers and for smaller businesses in the same event.  IT is IT, isn’t it? So where does the content for these two groups differ?

For both groups, IT products and services are simply tools to be used to help get their job done. To help get their product manufactured and sold, to help provide services, etc. Both groups are striving to gain productivity, reduce costs, and improve the end-user experience with them, but the biggest difference is in the expertise available to the company and where it is coming from.

Enterprise customers generally have extensive staffs of IT specialists that allow them to be mostly self-sufficient in the design, implementation and support of their IT infrastructure. SMB companies don’t usually have that luxury. In fact, for many smaller businesses, it is difficult to attract and properly compensate even one good general Tech/Manager to run their systems.

It is also difficult for the smaller business to afford the capital expenditure for all the IT products that are commonplace today.  It’s bad enough to have to fund all the workstation devices, but when you add in the servers, networking equipment, specialized operating software, etc., then the burden becomes disproportionately heavy for many small businesses.

The VMXpo event has significant content for the enterprise customer in all the vendors presentations with all their best-in-class virtualization and mobility products, so they will have numerous choices in the topics they choose to view at the event. Whitehat has also included a complete track of subjects that will be of interest to the small business owner or manager. These topics will be much less technical in nature, and much more oriented to the business problems that SMB executives are interested in. Here are some examples:

• Own my IT vs. Remote Manage vs. Remote Host, what’s the difference?
• How to Measure IT's Impact on Business Productivity & the End User Experience
• Business Executives Guide to the Mobile Employee
• Finding Business Value in "the Cloud" - Public, Private & Professional
• IT on a Budget - Evolving Self-Serve Technologies that Cut IT Support Costs
• Understanding Where Mobile & Virtualization Strategies can Positively Impact Business
• End Users are Unhappy & IT Can't Seem to Fix it - How to Solve "No-Ticketitis"
• Non-Techie Guide to Managing & Measuring the IT Side of the House
• The Small Village Panel - Tips to Maximize Business Growth & Minimize Business Disaster

The biggest question that keeps small business executives up at night these days is the own vs. manage vs. host question. The state of the industry has advanced to the point where outsourcing is about to become the norm, but it is a big step to trust your IT product, and your data…, to an outside firm, so many are naturally very cautious in making a decision in this area.

In the past, companies of all sizes have bought, maintained and operated their own IT systems. As we have pointed out previously in this article, that has become expensive and problematic. So what are your options? The first option is to continue to own your own hardware and software products, but have a third party that you trust administer and operate the system for you remotely. This resolves the personnel issues of finding, paying and keeping qualified techs on staff. It also offers redundancy in that remote management companies will have teams of techs so they won’t have to worry about one of their team taking a vacation like you might. Second, you may choose to can your entire system and have a third party provide hardware, software and management services for a monthly fee. This has become very attractive to many small business owners, especially if their current internal system needs replacing.

There are lots of options, and this event and these topics will help educate you on how to approach this and other subject of concern to SMB companies. We encourage you to attend by clicking the register button below.