HPE DEV at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2019

Didier Lalli

For three intense days, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2019 was held in Barcelona, Spain, May 20-23, 2019. The show, which took place in the Fira Gran Via, drew more than 7,000 attendees, a substantial increase from the 4,400 who attended last year. A cross-organizational team from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) staffed the event booth with representatives from the product business units, HPE DEV, HPE Storage, HPE Pre-Sales, and HPE Pointnext services. Though the team came from different groups within the company, everyone had one goal in mind: promote and educate attendees on what HPE offers in the areas of containers and Kubernetes (k8s).

I was fortunate to attend the conference, meeting other attendees who were all extremely engaged. Conversations at the booth revolved around HPE’s offerings for storage, composable infrastructure, and HPE Pointnext services, as well as the DevOps value offered via the HPE DEV community. I talked with people from small startups, who were unfamiliar with the split between Hewlett Packard (HP) and HPE, and those who were unfamiliar with what the acronym “HPE” meant. I also spoke with attendees from large companies, like Airbus and Orange Labs, looking to manage their infrastructure as code.

As always, booth swag was in high demand, especially our various stickers. We held a drawing each day for prizes and the winners were selected from new subscribers to the HPE DEV newsletter. We also offered attendees the Hybrid Cloud Management for Dummies booklet, which proved very popular. Our local host, Jessica Navas, helped with translation to ensure communications ran smoothly both in Spanish and English. With the great weather, intriguing conversations, and incredible tapas, it was an amazing show to attend.