This was Drobo’s first time participating in Interop. Having spent almost a decade in big networking prior to Drobo, I caught up with hundreds of friends and customers that I’d worked with in the past – not unlike a high-school reunion. The word “reunion” is the noun form of the verb “reunite,” a Middle English term from the Medieval Latin root “reunitus“: to bring together again. Just like a high school reunion, everyone commented on how I have a lot less hair than they remember (aren’t reunions great 
).
We had a great time introducing some folks to Drobo. But believe it or not, most people who stopped by our stand did not need the introduction.It was a Drobo reunion for them too. Many know how cool Drobo has been for years from our professional products, including some of the >200,000 customers we already have. Everyone wanted one at home after seeing the demo and who could blame them? Drobo is the easiest storage on the planet, voted most likely to succeed in the class of 2007!
More than just for home, it was a 5-year reunion for Drobo talking about visitors’ IT requirements. We found that in the crowd gathered in the Drobo booth, just about every Drobo user was telling everyone else how much they love their Drobo and how it applied to their IT environment. Drobo storage works great in all of the environments and applications folks are running.
Right across the street in Vegas parallel with Interop was Symantec Vision, the annual epicenter of things Symantec. Backup Exec 2012 is one of the IT solutions that really works great with Drobo storage, including leverage of their deduplication option – even more efficient with cost-saving Drobo iSCSI SAN for storing disk-based backups. In a recent Hardware Compatibility List from Symantec, all of Drobo’s products are listed as compatible and ready for action.
I mentioned that everyone wanted a Drobo for their home, and there was one lucky winner of our drawing for a B800i iSCSI SAN to use in a home virtualization lab with HA, lots of home media storage, and more backup for ALL of his devices. Congratulations to Mike Heit with the Nevada Department of Transportation. Like at all reunions, many folks leave a little jealous they did not win.
Net = It was a union more than a reunion, the combination of Drobo technology and the technologies of server, networking, and software vendors coming together to create solutions – and Drobo is a part of these solutions. Even though it was the first time and we were in a different high school for our freshman year, we graduated with the latest IT solution today and had fun with all of our friends talking about the great things people are doing with Drobos. You should get one for your shop at work.
Talk live to Mario and other Drobo experts @ http://www.drobo.com/live or e-mail mario@drobo.com.
Mario Blandini
Mario is VP of Technology Solutions @ Drobo. Responsible for technical marketing, the pre-sales technical team, product marketing contribution, and solution development with industry partners, he is the voice of Drobo webcasts / podcasts and the pitch man in most Drobo videos. Talk live to Mario and other Drobo experts @ http://www.drobo.com/live, or e-mail mario@drobo.com.
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bummer – it does not look like Drobo will be at Interop this year!