It’s odd how sometimes we can be dealing with a supplier for a long time for a particular purpose and not really be aware of the other things they have on offer. Sure, a sales person can come and visit or you can opt to receive newsletters and/or glossy brochures but these aren’t always ideal. I don’t know about you but I receive 20+ email newsletters per day from various companies that could keep me busy for most of the morning if I opted to read them. Sales people (though admittedly not all) often don’t have the depth of technical knowledge that may be required to talk about a particular solution which can sometimes lead to frustration.

Recently however, I had the good fortune to be invited to a suppliers technology open day and it was a breath of fresh air. This company had emptied most of its offices for the day and invited their partners in to showcase, demonstrate and talk about products they offer. This ranged from a 103" plasma screen, through several video conferencing solutions and digital signage solutions to technical infrastructure partners. The day was pretty informal, I was provided with a guide and plan layout showing everything that was on offer. Food and drink were also freely available throughout the day (which is always a plus point in my book !).

I have talked before about our digital signage requirements and have never seen a physical solution that could be demonstrated but on this day technical staff were also available to walk me through what was available and answer any questions I had. I also have a Netbotz environment monitoring appliance and have often been stuck for a place where I could get accessories for it, but there it was - at the open day. These are two areas I am definitely planning to pick up on. Another very interesting area was intelligent cabling infrastructure devices that sit in the computer room rack and can tell you which cable runs are in use, how often and even more importantly where they are and what they are connected to (with some integration into the hubs and switches I would imagine). Our computer room goes through phases of starting out being extremely tidy and well laid out to becoming a straggle of cables after periods of intense activity, so any facilities that can improve the information flow (and reduce the amount of guess work!) are highly beneficial.

I would whole heartedly recommend open days like this and I look forward to next years event - I just wish more suppliers would hold them.