What CIOs Love At The Midsize Enterprise Summit

Vision Events held its Midsize Enterprise Summit in Orlando, Fla., this week, bringing in more than 300 IT executives and dozens of vendors to talk about midmarket solutions. The following are some selected products, companies and solutions that excited attendees.

QlikTech International

The product: QlikView business intelligence software

Pictured: A QlikView employee demonstrates the company's product.

Quotable: "I've looked at in the past. It's a slick product. It's an easy initial implementation. People like graphical views of information," said Jim Williams, manager of information services, A&W Food Services, Vancouver, B.C.

Webroot

The products: Security solutions

Pictured: A busy time at Webroot's booth.

Quotable: "I think the whole shift to software-as-a-service is really intriguing. They were one of the vendors that really stood out, especially their hosted e-mail security, hosted Web security," said Tim Stuttle, director of IS infrastructure for Tech Soup, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization.

VMware

The product: VMware Virtual Center

Pictured: Virtualization was a popular topic among CIOs, so VMware's booth was a crowded place.

Quotable: "I think most organizations are now ready for virtualization. If they haven't, then they're stupid. Especially small and midsize companies. VMware absolutely helps lower your costs," said Jim Williams, manager of information services, A&W Food Services, Vancouver, B.C.

MPC

The products: Desktops, notebooks and servers

Pictured: A side view of the MPC/ClientPRO 434 All-In-One Managed Desktop.

Quotable: "I like them as an organization. They seem to be really focused on customer support. We don't use them [much yet] but based on previous presentations, we would definitely buy them," said Jim Williams, manager of information services at A&W Food Services of Canada, North Vancouver, B.C.

Microsoft

The products: Office, Exchange, etc.

Pictured: Attendees asked a lot of questions about Microsoft licensing.

Quotable: "Until their board room, I wouldn't have picked them [as an exciting product], but the direction they're headed with SaaS sounds ideal. Everyone uses it, everyone is familiar with it. To go through upgrade [implementation] is painful. To outsource their Exchange and SharePoint solutions has to got be a big plus for small and midsize businesses. These are things that take up lots of time. It's one of the things where you have to have the lights on, it's a given. But we don't want to spend any more time than necessary," said said Jim Williams, manager of information services at A&W Food Services of Canada, North Vancouver, B.C.

IPR International

The products: Backup, recovery and archiving solutions

Pictured: IPR's booth was at a far end, but nonetheless attracted a lot of visitors.

Quotable: "I like them as far as backup services. Let's get away from tape backups. They're a big pain and they don't always work. To be able to eliminate that, all those types of services will fit in with a midsize company very easily," Jim Williams, manager of information services, A&W Food Services, Vancouver, B.C.

Information Builders'

The products: Business intelligence and enterprise reporting applications

Pictured: Christopher Banks, director of business development, corporate sales, for Information Builders, explains the company's product to Edgard Bland, director of computer services for Mississippi Valley State University.

Quotable: "I'd be interested in them. The BI capabilities, I saw their presentation and it's something we be interested in. With raw data, we'd like to get some good information from it. We don't use BI yet. Their was one application, it featured them working with city law enforcement agency that would work well for our police department," said Conrad Cross, CIO for the city of Orlando's general administration, technology management department.

Kace

The product: KBox

Pictured: Kace's chose a racing theme for its Kbox systems management appliance.

Quotable: "It's done so much to simply our IT management. We assumed we needed a number of tools to address our IT management needs. With the KBox, it's all-in-one for software distribution, patch capability, inventory and asset management and help-desk functionality. It simplified our all our process, not just from a management perspective, but from the effort it would have taken to evaluate different products and them make them work together to fill all those needs," said Tim Stuttle, director of IS infrastructure for Tech Soup, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization.

TriGeo

The product: TriGeo Security Information Manager

Pictured: Jamie Winterset, vice president of sales, extolled the features of his company's solutions.

Quotable: "They're a real-time solution. They're able to catch things before our people. Instead of reacting to something, we can be able to do something in real time, before we even know about it," said Gaetano Buzzelli, CIO of the Information Technology Division for the city of Delray Beach, Fla.

Hewlett-Packard

The products: Desktops and notebooks

Pictured: HP showcased a variety of systems for MES attendees.

Quotable: "We do a hell of a lot with HP, desktops and midrange servers. We're in the process of changing out all the desktops in the city. We're two-thirds through with 3,000 PCs. They make a good product and the service behind it is very good," said Conrad Cross, CIO for the city of Orlando's general administration, technology management department.

Tandberg

The products: Videoconferencing equipment

Pictured: Lisa Watts, eastern regional marketing manager for Tandberg, talks with Conrad Cross.

Quotable: "We have considered them for multimedia, conferencing. They're one of the best companies out there when we did our research. The price for a midmarket [solution] was competitive and they've been in this field for a long time," said Conrad Cross, CIO for the city of Orlando's general administration, technology management department.

Hewlett-Packard

The product: The C3000, "Shorty" server.

Pictured: HP was touting its C3000 server, nicknamed "Shorty" at MES.

Quotable: "I like the space, the management ability, the energy savings, which is becoming more critical. I also like the expandability of it," said Douglas Manness, IT manager of Enns Brothers, a John Deere farm equipment dealer in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

ShoreTel

The products: VoIP Solutions

Pictured: ShoreTel demonstrated a variety of handsets. One of their executives joked that he couldn't remember his child's birthday, but he knows that the handsets weigh 180 grams, 60 percent of the weight on the top and 40 percent on the bottom.

Quotable: "We're looking at a VoIP solution. It looks like an easy-to-manage system, [easy to] deploy. It's something I think fits our company, and they have good-looking handsets," said Douglas Manness IT manager of Enns Brothers, a John Deere farm equipment dealer in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Seagate

The products: EVault data protection and backup solutions

Pictured: Dana Loof, left, vice president of marketing for EVault, shares a laugh with David Binder.

Quotable: "It's a good solid disk-to-disk backup and recovery solution. We've been using it. We wanted to get away from tape and we get good support from them," said David Binder, director of infrastructure and operations at Rober Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J.

Google

The products: Postini E-mail Filtering Solutions

Pictured: Google was a first-time attendee at the Midsize Enterprise Summit and left an impression on a number of attendees.

Quotable: "We've been using Postini for e-mail filtering and been paying $4 to $4.50 per user, per month. I have about 400 users, so you can do the math. During [Google's] presentation today, they talked about it with the addition of spam and some other things and they're going to charge $3 user per YEAR. I told the guy what I was paying and he said I should go talk to my Postini [rep]. If that pans out, it will be worth the trip here by itself," said David Binder, director of infrastructure and operations at Robber Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J.

Compellent

The product: Compellent Storage Center

Pictured: IT executive Nick Garbidakis listens to Compellent's pitch.

Quotable: "I'm not using it now, but I have EMC and it looks like a very good alternative to the big iron. It looks like a good solution," said Nick Garbidakis, CIO/CTO of American Bible Society, New York City.

StackSafe

The product: StackSafe Test Center

Pictured: The company's booth asked CIOs to question their ability to smoothly migrate to a new environment.

Quotable: "Their software makes it easier to copy my production environment to a test environment. Then we can work before we deploy to make sure things are working good," said Nick Garbidakis, CIO/CTO of American Bible Society, New York City.

Ecora

The product: Ecora Auditor Professional

Pictured: Ecora's vice president of marketing, Rob McKinney, center, chats with Nick Garbidakis about the company's configuration auditing and analytics applications.

Quotable: "In my company, we don't have regulatory [issues] like Sarbanes-Oxley to comply with, but it is a good product to use for best practices. Their software allows you to check system status and be able to provide to auditors that you're doing the right thing," said Nick Garbidakis, CIO/CTO of American Bible Society, New York City.

APC

The products: Data center power protection products.

Pictured: MES attendees got to look at the innards of some APC data center products including the InRow RC Cooling System.

Quotable: "We're putting in a data center and they're playing big for us in that. They're able to do not just the cooling, but the fire suppression and they'll have somebody right on site for the $200,000 project. I'm really pleased with them," said Gaetano Buzzelli, CIO of the Information Technology Division for the city of Delray Beach, Fla.

Kaspersky:

The product: Lab security software

Pictured: Kaspersky's Tim Hosier, Jeff Cross and Greg Felzer were happy to answer questions for attendees.

Quotable: "They might be able to help us cost wise and I'm going to be able to not just save money, but I think they'll also find things quicker. I'm going to experiment with them. Security is always a big thing with us," said Gaetano Buzzelli, CIO of the Information Technology Division for the city of Delray Beach, Fla.