Originally posted by: TonyPearson

Continuing my post-week coverage of the [Data Center 2010 conference], we had receptions on the Show floor. This started at the Monday evening reception and went on through a dessert reception Wednesday after lunch. I worked the IBM booth, and also walked around to make friends at other booths.

Here are my colleagues at the IBM booth. David Ayd, on the left, focuses on servers, everything from IBM System z mainframes, to POWER Systems that run IBM's AIX version of UNIX, and of course the System x servers for the x86 crowd. Greg Hintermeister, on the right, focuses on software, including IBM Systems Director and IBM Tivoli software. I covered all things storage, from disk to tape. For attendees that stopped by the booth expressing interest in IBM offerings, we gave out Starbucks gift cards for coffee, laptop bags, 4GB USB memory sticks and copies of my latest book: "Inside System Storage: Volume II".

Across the aisle were our cohorts from IBM Facilities and Data Center services. They had the big blue Portable Modular Data Center (PMDC). Last year, there were three vendors that offered these: IBM, SGI, and HP. Apparently, IBM won the smack-down, as IBM has returned victorious, as SGI only had the cooling portion of their "Ice Cube" and HP had no container whatsoever.

IBM's PMDC is fully insulated so that you can use it in cold weather below 50 degrees F like Alaska, to the hot climates up to 150 degrees F like Iraq or Afghanistan, and everything in between. They come in three lengths, 20, 40 and 53 feet, and can be combined and stacked as needed into bigger configurations. The systems include their own power generators, cooling, water chillers, fans, closed circuit surveillance, and fire suppression. Unlike the HP approach, IBM allows all the equipment to be serviced from the comfort inside.

This is Mary, one of the 200 employees secunded to the new VCE. Michael Capellas, the CEO of VCE, offered to give a hundred dollars to the [Boys and Girls Club of America], a charity we both support, if I agreed to take this picture. The Boys and Girls Club inspires and enables young people to realize their full potential as productive, responsible, and caring citizens, so it was for a good cause.

The show floor offers attendees a chance to see not just the major players in each space, but also all the new up-and-coming start-ups.

technorati tags: IBM, booth, LSC29, David Ayd, Greg Hintermeister, PMDC, SGI, HP, VCE, Michael Capellas