Arraya Celebrates the Success of its Inaugural Tech Summit
Knowledge shared, technologies spotlighted at debut Tech Summit
Attendees from a diverse cross-section of industries packed the hallways, conference rooms and ballroom of the Sheraton Valley Forge in King of Prussia last Thursday for the inaugural Arraya Solutions Tech Summit. The event, which was hailed as being “by techs, for techs,” was designed to give attendees the opportunity to learn about the latest and greatest technologies directly from Arraya’s industry-leading team of engineers. By day’s end, attendees had experienced a full slate of educational sessions, demonstrations and panel discussions on the tools and solutions that are changing the way they do their jobs.
Once attendees had signed in, they were treated to a full breakfast before heading in to one of the Sheraton’s ballrooms for a welcome address from Arraya’s CTO David Bakker. During his speech, Bakker briefly touched on the history of Arraya and its most recent successes, including being named to the 2015 Philly.com Top Workplace list, the CRN Tech Elite 250 list and the CRN Managed Service Provider 500 List. Bakker then walked attendees through what would be taking place during the day’s schedule.
At the conclusion of Bakker’s opening remarks, the first event of the day began: the CIO Panel. This discussion was moderated by Bakker and featured three of the area’s top technology executives: Perry Cozzone, President – North America of Colorcon, Chris Kohl, Vice President and CIO of Vertex and Ken Weirman, Vice President and CIO of AMETEK. The theme of the panel was “Bridging the Gap: Bringing the C-Suite and the Frontlines Together to Elevate IT and the Organization as a Whole.” Among the topics covered were the critical nature of Time to Value and developing and managing IT budgets – all geared towards showing IT personnel how they can add business value to their organizations.
Following the CIO Panel, attendees divided up among six separate conference rooms, each of which hosted a breakout session on a different IT subject. These deep-dive sessions covered enterprise monitoring, next generation security, the cloud and more. Each was led by one or more of Arraya’s engineers, to ensure expert-level treatment of the subject matter. Two rounds of breakout sessions bookended a lunch break, giving attendees 24 courses to choose from during the day.
One of those sessions was a presentation on Business Continuity and Recovery put on by Einstein Healthcare Network and moderated by Arraya CEO Dan Lifshutz. It highlighted their efforts as well as their partnership with Arraya in that area.
After the final set of breakout sessions came the Arraya Tech Panel. This gave attendees access to the full scope of Arraya’s technological expertise – all on one stage. Seven of Arraya’s Team Leads, with dozens and dozens of years of combined experience, participated in a lively debate moderated by Thomas York, Arraya’s Director of Product Management, on hot button topics such as the cloud, collaboration, managed services, etc. Attendees were able to jump into the fray and pick the brains of the Team Leads on a range of other topics.
Throughout the day, attendees also could visit with event sponsors in the exhibit hall to learn more about the products and tools each has in the pipeline. The featured exhibitors included Cisco, EMC, Microsoft, VCE and VMware.
Following the Tech Panel, there was a cocktail reception and dinner in the ballroom, where attendees and engineers could talk in a more relaxed setting about the topics covered over the course of the day.
“We were thrilled with the enthusiastic response to the Tech Summit from our team and from customers,” said Bakker. “Sharing knowledge has always been something our techs have done internally and they really embraced doing the same with our customers. As a company, we’re looking forward to opening our doors and giving our customers that same level of access again in the future.”
To learn more about Arraya, visit us online at www.ArrayaSolutions.com or follow us on Twitter, @ArrayaSolutions.
