The Itanium Solutions Blog

As the readers of this blog know, a strong area of focus for the Alliance is mission-critical computing. When your server infrastructure absolutely can’t fail, it’s important to develop sound understanding of the technology and take a disciplined approach to project planning. For those looking to further their expertise in this area, we strongly recommend attending an upcoming webinar: “Mission Critical Systems” on May 5th. The webinar is sponsored by the Connect user group and will feature Colin Butcher, of Alliance member, XDelta Limited. He will discuss the factors governing systems availability and performance, complemented by real-life examples of the design and implementation of all aspects of a system from hardware and infrastructure to application software.

Colin has been responsible for the architectural design, implementation and management of several major projects, including satellite control, air traffic monitoring, finance data and healthcare infrastructures. His work for the the NHS Blood & Transplant Services was honored last year as part of the Itanium Innovation Awards. View the case study here. You can also view Colin describing the NHSBT project in this video.

Mission-Critical Systems Webinar:

Wednesday, May 5, 2010 5:00 AM - 7:00 AM EDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/380616857

Wednesday, May 5, 2010 10:00 AM - 12:00 Noon EDT
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/426881057

Alliance president Joan Jacobs and I were honored to represent the Itanium Solutions Alliance at the recent Annual Summit of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP). At the Awards dinner, the group honored the Alliance with its “Long-Established Alliance Award.”

The Association recognized the unique value that the Itanium Solutions Alliance has brought to the Itanium ecosystem since its founding. The Association also noted that the Alliance is unique in how competitors have come together in a collaborative environment to benefit customers who use Itanium-based solutions.

The Alliance beat out companies like IBM and EMC is this year’s program, and previous winners in the Long-Established Alliance award category include The Walt Disney Company and Coca-Cola. The Alliance is in good company indeed!

Read more about the Alliance’s award winning work in the press release.

Congratulations to all Itanium Solutions Alliance Sponsors, Charter Members, and Members! You all played a part in making this award a reality.

In these tough economic times, we are all witness to the profound and unrelenting change and disruption in global economies and markets. Dealing with disruptive change is not easy — it requires careful planning, the proper assessment of risk, and the avoidance of short-term fixes to the detriment of long-term strategies. Companies are looking hard at necessary cost improvements to their IT infrastructure and doing more with less; which has become the mantra of many organizations on the path from surviving to thriving again.

Fortunately, the Itanium Solutions Alliance was formed with a common vision for a new era of mission-critical computing that includes delivering a cost effective, open standards-based infrastructure for businesses and large enterprises who need to ensure their data is protected and always available.

This year the Itanium platform will move from dual-core to a more powerful and more reliable quad-core foundation, assuring users that performance gains are keeping up with the demands of their data infrastructure.

In this video, Kirk Skaugen, VP of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group and General Manager of Intel’s Server Platforms Group explains how a group of competitors in the mission-critical computing segment got together to form the Alliance, what that means for today’s customers, and how it helps address the requirements of tomorrow.

This week Joan Jacobs and I have been attending the 2009 Summit of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP).   This is a fascinating group of individuals who manage a wide variety of alliance programs and relationships.  There is strong membership from both the IT and Bio-Pharma industries along with individuals from education, finance, insurance, and manufacturing.  The group has local chapters in many areas including New England and Silicon Valley.  ASAP is working with a number of firms to create a group in Japan as well.  I recommend that anyone interested in Alliances look into the organization.  http://www.strategic-alliances.org/

As part of the Hi-Tech track on Tuesday afternoon, Joan and I presented on the Itanium Solutions Alliance.  Our slide deck is available on slideshare for those who are interested.  We got a lot of positive feedback.  Attendees were interested in how our Alliance brought together companies that usually compete with each other in order to achieve common goals.  Although our session was the last of the day, and the thing only standing between attendees and the cocktail reception, the audience of about 75 stuck with us through the end.  http://www.slideshare.net/amasland

Other sessions in the Hi-Tech track included speakers from HP, BT, CA, Microsoft, Telus, Cisco, software.com, and Flextronics.  While all had slightly different perspectives on Alliances, all supported the notion that companies can gain strategic advantage through well managed Alliance programs.  I couldn’t agree more.

Joan Jacobs, the Alliance’s president and executive director, and I will be speaking next month at the annual Summit of the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.  We are both excited by the opportunity to share the success of the Itanium Solutions Alliance with this group of professionals who manage alliance relationships across many industries.  Perhaps more important, we’ll be sharing what the Alliance has learned over the past three plus years since the Alliance’s founding.

The theme of our presentation will be how to foster a cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship among a group of companies who are competitors in the market.  We’ll share how the common goals of the sponsor companies helped them overcome initial hesitation over forming the Alliance.  We hope that those who attend the session will be able to apply what we have learned to improve their alliance relationships.

If you are attending the summit, please join us at 4:50 p.m. on Tuesday, February 10th.  We hope to see you there.  And if you can’t attend the event but would like more information, please send an email to Joan or me.  We’d be glad to share more on this topic and learn your perspective as well.  Here’s where you’ll find more about the ASAP Summit.

Joan and I will attend other conference sessions.  We hope to take what we learn at the event to further enhance the Alliance’s success in 2009 and beyond.  Stay tuned for more on the Summit and our experiences there.