PCD / Converge blog

The CONTINUUM™ Innovation Centre – A Cloud Laboratory Serving Local Businesses

In collaboration with VMware, PCD Solutions has set up a new Innovation Centre that serves as a cloud solution education and demonstration lab for businesses. The official announcement and program for the initial events are outlined here.

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About the CONTINUUM Innovation Centre

PCD Solutions and VMware have just launched the CONTINUUM™ Innovation Centre. The state-of-the-art equipment housed at the Centre makes it the first cloud solution education and demonstration facility in Canada for businesses. This innovation centre, based right here in Montréal, is integrated with leading public cloud providers and showcases the benefits of the VMware SDDC (Software-Defined Data Centre) approach. By bringing together the top specialists in the industry and closely monitoring the first major cloud projects in the province of Quebec, this initiative aims to help companies visualize the future transformation of their data centres into the age of the hybrid cloud.

 

Through presentations, workshops, and technical demonstrations, companies will now be able to clearly understand how the cloud can help them to better manage their environments and services via increased speed, improved agility and greater efficiency.

 

YouTube Video

In the following online video, you will learn more about the Innovation Centre and the opportunities available to you and your business. Take a few minutes to learn what it is all about, and please feel free to contact us for more information.

Video (In French only)

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Click here to watch the video.

 

Who Is the Innovation Centre Designed For?

Since the arrival of the cloud, and in particular the hybrid cloud, many clients have been wondering how it works and what impact it will have on their businesses, data management, technological direction, and future investments, among other things. To respond to these concerns, PCD Solutions decided to launch the Innovation Centre initiative. Designed for both IT management, architecture and operations teams, the goal of the initiative is therefore to:

 

  • Present companies with the latest innovations and opportunities available through the hybrid cloud
  • Analyze market trends and the first major cloud projects in the province of Quebec
  • Demonstrate the ease of use and quality of integration of the various VMware cloud solution components
  • Clarify how data centre operations work with the Software-Defined Data Centre approach
  • Share with customers how their private cloud environments will gradually connect and tap into specific services from public cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, IBM Cloud, ThinkOn, etc.

 

The field of cloud computing is sometimes complex and abstract. So, we recreated several possible scenarios in our lab environments, thus replicating real corporate conditions and operations to show you how your IT teams could manage their services in the future in this new, hybrid cloud reality. Your IT architecture and operations managers will even be able to see that it is both possible to build their own internal cloud, set up consumption controls and implement security measures necessary for managing services provided externally by public cloud providers or, as is often the case, do both at the same time.

 

Planned activities and presentations

In order for our clients to experience the Innovation Centre based on their own projects and interests, we developed a program with three main types of sessions: Innovation Forums (for executives in the field of IT), TechnoLab Sessions (technical exploration and education laboratory sessions on how VMware SDDC solutions work and how they can benefit companies based on specific situations) and lastly Customized Sessions (completely tailored to your company, its projects and your team’s level of understanding). Here’s a look at the first few scheduled events:

 

  • MARCH 29 – TechnoLab Session/ Making the shift to NSX – Security and Microsegmentation. A workshop for IT architects, operations managers, VMware managers, network managers and security administrators. This demonstration workshop presents the current security challenges companies face and how VMware NSX can finally solve them.
  • APRIL 11 – Innovation Forum / The new, hybrid cloud reality. An executive presentation for CIOs, VPs and IT Directors with special guest Peter Near from the Canadian leadership team at VMware. This session focusses on the shift to the hybrid cloud, market trend analysis, VMware’s SDDC vision, the strategic alliance between VMware and Amazon, and the first local cloud achievements.
  • APRIL 26 – TechnoLab Session / Trend toward vSAN converged environments  – A demonstration workshop designed for IT architects, operations managers, VMware and storage managers. This session focusses on the transformation of storage practices and architectures, the converged infrastructure approach, VMware’s vSAN solution and the shift toward software-defined storage.
  • MAY 24 – TechnoLab Session/ Making the shift to NSX – Security and Microsegmentation. A workshop for IT architects, operations managers, VMware managers, network managers and security administrators. This demonstration workshop presents the current security challenges companies face and how VMware NSX can finally solve them.

 

Come See Us!

The future-focused CONTINUUM™ Innovation Centre is a major PCD investment. We want to demonstrate in Montréal and in French our knowledge on the operation and benefits of the most recent cloud solutions that can be built around VMware’s SDDC technology. Since it opened, the Centre has served as a laboratory for simulation and proof-of-concept exercises. It is used by VMware and our own team to carry out mandates, conduct training sessions, hold discovery workshops and provide customized technical demonstrations.

So, call us! Come see all the possibilities for yourself.

 

Pierre Cayouette,
Co-président — PCD Solutions

Courriel : pcayouette@pcdsolutions.com