019: planning trade shows and product announcements

In the dull days of January all vendors are preparing their campaigns for the rest of the year. Whether it be just marketing campaigns with jumping trucks or real product announcements. 

Marc, Hans, Nigel and Gabriel share their experiences and insights in how product announcements are planned and which times a year would never work. They also talk about the bigger trade shows like VMworld or Cisco Live.

(note: Hans mentioned Cisco Live doing not only US, EMEA and APAC but also South-America. That apparently is Mexico so close but no cigar)

A second big topic was a new IDC research paper (link: The Register) which you can buy for $15,000 (note: moehahaha) in the HyperConverged market space.  As we all have come across quite a few analyst papers we take our shot at what their value is, to us at least.

In merger, acquisition and investment land there are a couple of interesting rounds this week:

• VMturbo brings in a $50mln D-round for global growth.
• Ravello gets a push through with a $28mln C-round
• SDN player Pluribus Networks also brings a $50mln D-round to the bank

I you want to know more about Pluribus, Hans did mention their participation last year at Networking Field Day (NFD7 & NFD8). Well worth your time if you are interested. By the way, VMturbo also joined at a couple of editions at Virtualization Field Days.