USA Conference 2019: Next Generation of ITAM – a recap

ITAM News & Analysis

USA Conference 2019: Next Generation of ITAM – a recap

Our USA conference 2019 was awesome. I always enjoy myself at our conferences, but this has definitely set the bar high for all future events!

Training

We flew over to sunny Florida and kicked off with our licensing training “pre-day” which, I’m pleased to say, went brilliantly. We ran 3 concurrent courses, covering:

• Microsoft
• Oracle
• VMware

The sessions were well attended, and all the presenters got great feedback too

I ran the Microsoft course and it was a brilliant day. There were so many great questions and people sharing their real-world experience about a wide range of topics – we could have spent the whole day talking about contract negotiation tactics!

Acquiring and keeping up to date with licensing knowledge is key for many in ITAM, and it can be difficult to find the resources and time to do so. It’s great to be able to help with this – and so we’re adding IBM licensing to the line-up for the UK too.

The conference

One of the first things that struck me was how many delegates had been in the job for less than 18 months – it seems there has been an uptick in organisations creating SAM/ITAM roles throughout 2018/19. This is a great thing for the industry, more companies and people taking ITAM seriously can only be positive – particularly as IaaS and SaaS stand to increase the costs and risks even further. With attendees from all over the US, as well as Canada, Mexico, and Costa Rica, there was a great mix of industries, maturity, and areas of focus.

We had a wonderful range of speakers covering a great, varied range of topics including:

• IaaS Cost Management
• Open Source Hygiene
• Salesforce Contracts and Licensing
• SaaS Management
• Oracle Java
• ITAM & Security
• ISO Standards
• SAM in the Datacentre
• Technical Datacentre Concepts
• IT Asset Disposal

And more. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to attend all the sessions (roll on quantum conferencing!) but it’s clear the speakers all did a terrific job, and the attendees were full of questions, tips, and suggestions to make the sessions extra valuable.

As always, we had an interesting panel session which featured some great questions, and equally great answers! Big thanks to our panel for their time and knowledge.

It’s good to talk

Having run over 50 events (!) we know how much of a chatty bunch the ITAM Review community is, so we made sure there was plenty of time for our delegates to spend talking to each other, as well as our speakers and sponsors.

We had some fantastic conversations with attendees, and it was great to see things such as Windows 10 upgrades, IaaS & SaaS usage, and audit processes from new perspectives – it really helps us gain an ever better understanding of the challenges you all face.

Alongside the first-time delegates, there were those with years of experience under their belts – and the scars and audit letters to prove it. It was great to see them so willing to share their experience and thoughts with other delegates, helping them move along the same path – but a little more smoothly.

ITAM outside

One of the (many) highlights of our events is the opportunity to meet the community away from the conference hall. This year, we kicked off with pre-conference drinks & food down by the water on the Tuesday, and some of our sponsors hosted events the following evening. Fortunately, there was still plenty of energy in the rooms on day two!

It’s great to get to know our community as people and, as great as it is, not just talk about ITAM. For example, I know Rich had some great conversations about Manchester United and soccer, and baseball too.

On the final night, we headed down to our regular Florida haunt, Caddy’s on the Beach, for one of the trademark sunsets – so good they get applauded from the beach! Lots of hard work goes into our events and we really appreciate the time our attendees and sponsors commit to them, but it truly is a pleasure to put them on.

Feedback

You’ve heard from us, but it’s always helpful to hear from actual attendees so here’s a selection of the feedback we’ve received:

“First let me thank and congratulate you on a FANTASTIC conference last week in St. Petersburg FL. It was extremely informative. It is my second year attending to it, and it was great to see how much I have furthered our Asset Management status,”

“Great conference, learned a lot that I thought I already knew! And picked up some additional perspectives and ways of looking at things that I hadn’t thought about before.”

“This is my first attendance. Very refreshing to experience a community of fellow ITAM peers. Very valuable to hear, understand, and share experiences with one another.”

 

“ITAM Review is truly the Premium content pertaining to ITAM. None of the other organizations come close. Keep up the great work.”

Thank you

As you can see, we’ve had loads of great feedback, which is lovely and really appreciated; we’re already looking forward to returning to the US in 2020 and building on the great success of this year!

Thank you to everyone involved – attendees, speakers, sponsors, the ITAM Review team, the wonderful venue staff, and everyone who liked/shared/retweeted etc.!

If you attended this year, it was great to meet you and we look forward to seeing you next year.

If you didn’t attend, we’ll let you off (this time) but really want to see you there in 2020!

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