A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with ONUG Board member and co-chair Harmen Van der Linde of Citi. As board members, we are always focused on what ONUG can and should do to benefit the vast majority of community members as this is ONUG’s differentiation. That is, ONUG is a global 2000 IT business leader user group, and as such, we look at the industry through the lens of IT consumers. We spent a good amount of time on the differential question. What we realized was that ONUG is the only user-led organization that is building a hybrid and multi-cloud ecosystem. What community members get at ONUG is a wide range of views from peers as well as vendors and cloud providers. At ONUG Spring in Dallas on May 7th and 8th, the ONUG hybrid and multi-cloud ecosystem will be on full display, especially with midday keynotes from Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Riverbed, Gluware, Silver Peak, NETSCOUT, and Versa.

Hybrid/Multi-Cloud Proofs of Concept: There are some 40 vendors that will be demonstrating at ONUG Spring in Dallas; all of which are offering unique hybrid and multi-cloud software building block solutions as the major technical underpinning of digital transformation projects. In addition to the amazing lineup of IT executive-exclusive conference sessions sharing hybrid and multi-cloud lessons learned, there will be proof of concept (PoC) demonstrations by nearly all vendors. The PoCs are based upon use case requirements developed in the ONUG Working Groups. All working groups are focused on hybrid and multi-cloud use cases that span connecting to multiple clouds via SD-WAN 2.0, monitoring, observability, analytics and securing workload performance and health as they stretch across multiple clouds.

Hybrid/Multi-Cloud Midday User/Vendor Partnership Keynotes: One of the highlights of ONUG Spring will be the midday keynotes. The ONUG Board designed the midday keynotes to show how vendors and IT executives partner to solve a problem. In short, they wanted to see how two companies engaged to address a challenge. These midday keynotes are 20-minute sessions led by an IT executive describing the problem they were having and how they partnered with a vendor to develop a solution. The vendor describes the solution and how it addresses the IT executive’s requirements. The session is followed up with a detailed description of the outcome. All ONUG Spring midday user/vendor partnership keynotes are focused on best practices and challenges of building and running hybrid/multi-cloud infrastructures.

During that dinner with Harmen, we realized that there is no other place in the industry other than ONUG where you can hear, at one conference, how Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Riverbed, Gluware, Silver Peak, NETSCOUT, and Versa partnered with their customers to deliver successful digital outcomes. It’s a special and unique experience, especially when you can talk with the presenters during breaks and cocktail receptions to dive deeper and learn more.

At ONUG Spring in Dallas on May 7th and 8th, we bring the first user-defined hybrid/multi-cloud ecosystem with 40 vendors delivering demonstrations, PoCs and user/vendor partnership keynotes and of course, 500 IT executives with whom to learn, network and have fun!

Join the ONUG Community to pick the software building blocks out of the ONUG hybrid/multi-cloud ecosystem on display at ONUG Spring in Dallas that works best for you and your company. You can join Harmen and I for dinner at the receptions too.

You know you can build it because you saw it at ONUG!