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The HP World Tour 2014 has (unusually) start from Italy, with the Milan show, the first of an European series of international events with the goal of bringing in different countries the format of HP Discover, the main HP event for customers and partners. This event was an important opportunity to celebrate the history of innovation by HP, which this year reaches its 50 years of presence in Italy, which is strongly linked to local businesses, institutions and the ecosystem of partners and channel .

Many participants took part in the day’s World Tour, in which the protagonists were the issues related to innovation and HP solutions for the “New Style of IT”, to help enterprises to meet the challenges of the market and contribute to the definition of new business models and business, supported by an IT most flexible, accessible and efficient.

The event was actually more geared to customers, rather than the partners (however I had been invited to the #HPWorldTour as a blogger) and the technical content was not comparable to that of the HP Discover (even if only for duration of the event).

There is, however, an overview was fairly broad solutions portfolio that spans 360° over the Consumer and Enterprise world with a constant commitment to research and development,  and also an overview of HP approach and the paradigm that bring to “a new style of IT. ”

The event was first of all an opportunity to celebrate 75 years of HP (even when the computer does not really exist, at least not as we know it today) and 50 years of HP Italy. And if we are also a part of the Italian industrial history itself.

During the event, HP also introduced to partners, customers and journalists the latest product innovations in the field of printing and PC, starting with the HP Officejet Enterprise, the first range of inkjet printers dedicated to large companies. With regard to consumer solutions , HP has shown for the first time in Italy and VoiceTab 6 HP Slate HP Slate 7 VoiceTab two innovative devices that are placed halfway between a smartphone and a tablet – the so-called phablet – which represent the first step of the company to Palo Alto in mobile telephony.

So really a lot of consumer’s related stuff, but also Enterprise has got its space with cloud and storage in the first place. Cloud approach has a little surprised me (but after knowing the history, not even that much) with the proposal of HP CloudSystem,  based on HP Cloud OS and OpenStack. The market then tell whether this road will be successful or if maybe it was better follow a strong partneship with VMware and/or Microsoft (or also RedHat). The comparison used the explain the choice of OpenStack was based on success of OpenSource in the web world; this has a strong validity in many fields, but not in all. The standardization must come first (at least in the Enterprise) and, paradoxically, the fact that it is open standards or proprietary standards remains only in the second priority.

The storage strategy could be summarized with this picture:

HPWorldTour-Storage

Sound strange that in this picture there isn’t HP StoreVirtual (the name designating the LeftHand family), but in reality it was discussed thoroughly, even if the message appears to relegate (in the future) more in her than in the form of VSA storage (considering also the interesting new low-end products of the family StoreServ).

Intel, Microsoft and VMware have participated in World Tour HP as a Platinum Sponsor, along with Brocade, Double-Take, Fortinet, Red Hat and Suse, such as Silver Sponsor of the event.

HPWorldTour-Sponsor

There is also a nice report with Storify that summarize the event.

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Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-20 and vExpert Pro. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-19. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.