GreenPages CEO Ron Dupler Monday kicked off the $100 million solution provider's 13th annual Solutions Summit with a call to arms for IT executives to move to the cloud and embrace the utility computing model.
Proclaiming that IT executives need to get out of the network plumbing business, Dupler said the move to utility computing represents a "profound, pervasive and inevitable technology paradigm shift" in how computing resources will be delivered and one that cannot be ignored.
"Information technology will be delivered as a utility," Dupler told the 87 IT executives attending the three-day summit. "You can perpetuate the old paradigm or move to the new paradigm, which is coming quickly. It is very important that you are looking at the big picture and thinking strategically."
Kittery, Maine-based GreenPages, which was No. 282 on Everything Channel's 2009 VAR500 list, has bet heavily on the move to the cloud with an aggressive ramp of its virtualization consulting and engineering team, which is chartered with architecting a road map for GreenPages customers to move to the cloud. In fact, Dupler said the virtualization team is at the forefront of GreenPages, acting as a cross-functional team that interacts with all of the GreenPages units, including application development and integration and network infrastructure.
GreenPages, the 2009 Everything Channel Education Solution Provider of the Year, is one of VMware's top partners in the Northeast. "We have amassed some outstanding virtualization talent," boasted Dupler.
What's more, GreenPages is teaming with Cisco, VMware and EMC to deliver on the cloud computing vision. The three companies are working with GreenPages on building private clouds for businesses. The summit includes addresses from top executives from each of the companies: VMware Executive Vice President Carl Eschenbach, EMC Senior Vice President Mitch Breen and Cisco Director of Technology, Go To Market, Routing, Switching and Data Center Worldwide Channels John Growdon.
Dupler called the three major computing players working together an example of the path the rest of the computer industry will have to take to make cloud computing a reality.
If that isn't enough to get Summitt attendees to seriously consider the cloud computing model, GreenPages is giving the IT executives copies of technologist Nicholas Carr's new book, "The Big Switch," which contrasts the move by companies 100 years ago to stop generating their own power and move to the electric grid with the current utility computing revolution.
Dupler said GreenPages has moved from a solution provider to a consulting and technology integration company. "What we are about today is operating at the value level where we offer strategic advice," he told IT executives.
Dupler emphasized GreenPages' ability to act as an "unbiased" IT adviser helping businesses navigate the treacherous transformation to the utility computing model.
Dupler said the secret to making the move to the cloud lies not in one technology, but in "how technologies work together." And that is where GreenPages excels, he said, acting as an integrator to tie all of the technologies necessary to move to the cloud from servers to storage to unified communications.
The stepped-up GreenPages cloud computing effort came even in the midst of what Dupler called a "nosedive" in IT spending that began late last year and lasted through the first half. "Throughout that, we didn't go into hibernation mode," he asserted. "We continued to move forward and make significant progress." In fact, he said, GreenPages is adding new virtualization talent to the company ."Despite all the doom and gloom, we are in hiring mode," he said.
Dupler said he believes the worst of the IT technology downturn has passed. "We believe we are absolutely through the worst of it," he said. In fact, he said, GreenPages has seen a "big pickup" in IT spending in June and July.
