Cisco Live 2011 was simply an amazing event for 1E. After each event that we participate in, I love to sit down with fellow employees who worked the event to get their unique perspective. For Cisco Live 2011, Andy Hawkins, Product Manager and Business Analyst for 1E, was my target for this event.
Andy was gracious enough to answer some of my questions. One key and critically important aspect of Cisco Live (as you'll read below) is our new partnership with Cisco and our integration with their EnergyWise solution. Here's the interview:
Me: 1E participated at Cisco Live 2011 for the first time ever. Why do you think this is significant?
Andy Hawkins: 1E are very excited to be a partner of Cisco. We've been building support for Cisco EnergyWise into our NightWatchman products and launched an update for NightWatchman Server Edition with support for Cisco EnergyWise at Cisco Live 2011.
Me: The 1E booth at Cisco Live 2011 received a heavy flow of traffic. It seemed that the booth was filled to capacity for each product presentation. What makes the 1E message so special?
Andy Hawkins: Who doesn't want to save money? Cisco Live is a great opportunity for us to meet new people who are interested in identifying and removing waste to improve the efficiency of their IT. Our presentations showed how to optimize the use of IT resources, for instance reducing energy used by data centers servers and office PCs, improving the efficiency of virtualized environments and making better use of the network to distribute software updates and OS upgrades.
Me: Cisco were demonstrating NightWatchman Server Edition at the show. Do you think this was well received?
Andy Hawkins: Yes, it was really great to see our software running in the Cisco EnergyWise labs and showcased at Cisco Live. The Technical Solution Clinic area was really busy, and visitors got to see how our solution fits into the entire EnergyWise ecosystem.
Me: Can you explain what 1E's integration with Cisco EnergyWise is, and what value it provides to Cisco customers?
Andy Hawkins: There's a real problem today with consolidating energy management. There are so many device types each requiring a different approach to save energy and a different toolset to gain visibility and control.
The commonality between all these devices is the network, and that's where Cisco EnergyWise comes in. It provides a standardized way to monitor and manage the energy use of network connected devices. 1E software provides the intelligence required to maximize savings without causing disruption and delivers the reports which prove the benefits in financial and environmental terms.
Me: 1E continues to hammer this "Efficient IT" thing. How is this different than just managing power states in the datacenter?
Andy Hawkins: I'll take our NightWatchman Server Edition solution as an example. We start off by showing you how much energy each server uses, including the virtualized ones. That's interesting information. What's really valuable is what we do next. We show you when that energy provided value to the business, in other words, when each server actually did anything useful as opposed to simply running housekeeping tasks. That's the difference between managing server efficiency and just reviewing how much your power bill is.
Me: 1E consistently talks about "Sunshine". Can you tell us what that means to you from an Cisco Live 2011 perspective?
Andy Hawkins: *laughs* There's always lots of sunshine in Las Vegas! We love telling our story but we always like to have fun while we're at it, and at Cisco Live 2011 we had two fantastic magicians performing amazing tricks and giving away prizes, although sometimes you had to work to win by answering a question based on us and our products. We just like to check you were listening.. And for this event, in addition to our ever popular and incredibly cute polar bears we had the exclusive 1E branded kazoo which was surprisingly popular and part of an EnergyWise partner ecosystem event!
Me: What was your favorite Cisco Live 2011 moment?
Andy Hawkins: Unfortunately I didn't get to meet William Shatner, so I can't say it was that. I think it might've been the tweet I saw around the time of the first keynote which mentioned something about a 'nerd herd'…
