Backup & Beyond

This may be old hat to some of you, but I’m nevertheless excited about it!

Later today, we’ll be exhibiting at our first ever Virtual Tradeshow: the MSP Partners Virtual Tradeshow!

The event is scheduled between 9AM & 6PM, EST. Attendance is free; you simply need to sign up. Details on the event (including the free sign up link) are available here.

I heard that over 700 people had already signed up till 2 days ago!

So, if you haven’t attended one of these, drop in - at least for the experience of what a virtual trade show looks like.

I’ve posted a picture of our virtual booth here, and will try and post a video from the event later.

Virtually,

Lux

We recently attended the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference at Houston!

Two interesting things from the conference (that were not directly related to the event itself):

a) The StoreGrid demo we were running during the event had a StoreGrid server running on Amazon EC2 - with storage off Amazon S3. It worked flawlessly! Look out for a Beta of an ‘S3 capable’ StoreGrid - coming soon!

b) We’ve decided to ‘hit the road’ - and attend other relevant tradeshows/events to the extent possible. The best part about the Microsoft event was that it gave us the opportunity to meet many of our existing partners, put faces to names, and to understand their business & its associated requirements even better.

Towards having more sessions like these (and of course, recruiting new partners), we’ll be attending…

Hostingcon 2008 (we’re at Booth #104)

July 28-30, Navy Pier, Chicago, Illinois (Click here for more details on Hostingcon)

Comptia Breakaway 2008 (we’re at Booth #222)

August 5-7, Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center, Orlando, Florida (Click here for more details on Comptia Breakaway)

If you’re attending either of these events, please drop by and say hello! You can also schedule a meeting, in advance.

We also have 3 FREE passes to give away to our partners (currently using StoreGrid SP Edition) for the CompTIA Breakaway event (each pass is valued at approximately US$ 695). Partners have been sent an email on this, but here are the details once again…

If you’re interested in one of these 3 free passes, please email us right away at news AT vembu DOT com and type ‘Interested in attending CompTIA’ in the subject line of your mail.

We’ll select 3 names from the first 50 requests we receive or at 11.59 PST on July 29 - whichever comes first. Please ensure that you will definitely make it to the event if you win - we’d hate to see a pass go unutilized!

Please note that these passes cover the event only (a value of approx. US$ 695). You’d need to arrange for your travel, accommodation, etc - on your own. Additionally, if there are any other associated charges/fees levied by CompTIA or other bodies, you’d need to directly take care of these.

From what we’ve heard, these CompTIA events are quite interesting and educative!

Hope to see you in Chicago and/or Orlando! What events are you attending this year? Let us know, and we’ll try and be there

Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, 2008 will be held in Houston, Texas between July 7 & 10. The exhibit hall will be open between July 8 & 10 and we’ll be there at Booth no. 1063 (yes its a big event; but no, they don’t have 1000+ booths)!

If you’re attending or if you’ll be in Houston (or thereabouts), it would be great to catch up and put faces to names. I’ll be there and so will Sekar Vembu, our CEO!

If you can make it, do let us know here.

While on the subject of tradeshows…

What other events do you suggest we attend? Xchange? SMBNation? HostingCon? We’re planning on attending a few select events and obviously wish to select those where we can meet our (existing & prospective) partners! Please give your suggestions in the comments below.

(someone asked me why we chose this title for this post)