Network Diagramming Channel Feature

Why You Should Attend the OPNETWORK Conference

By Amanda Ciccatelli
TMCnet Web Editor

OPNET, provider of solutions for application and network performance management as well as network diagramming, holds OPNETWORK each year, its annual conference focusing on advancing the state of application and network performance management. OPNETWORK 2012 took place just a few weeks ago, and OPNET is pleased with the success of the event year after year.

As the largest event of its kind, attracting thought leaders from industry, government, and academic communities from all over the world, OPNETWORK 2012 was held August 13-17 in Washington, D.C. The conference is free for all maintained customers and includes course materials, 550+ hours of sessions, special presentations, nightly entertainment, meals and access to online proceedings.

Of the many reasons to attend OPNETWORK, here are just a few:

·         Get high quality hands-on training.

·         Learn about IT management best practices from peers and industry experts.

·         Quickly and efficiently obtain a detailed understanding of new products and capabilities.

·         Learn about OPNET products from the users to accelerate your own solution assessment.

·         Meet directly with OPNET management and product development.

·         Showcase your organization’s IT management accomplishments.

“A lot of our customers invite people from other groups to attend this conference. So, they can not only introduce them to other OPNET products that are out there, but they also have the opportunity to share ideas on how to make the overall IT experience within their organization much better by sharing information through a single platform,” Vinod Jeyachandran, vice president of Engineering and product manager at OPNET, told TMCnet in an exclusive interview.

OPNETWORK also offers classes throughout the five days, which include hands on sessions with all OPNET products. Users who are used to a specific product area get the opportunity to see how the other products work with the ones they already own, as well as how those products can solve their organizations problems.

“It is a great opportunity for people to meet other customers and learn about how they use various products,” said Jeyachandran.

Additionally, OPNET partners with the International Association of Continuing Education and Training (IACET), which a lot of employers use to advance the training for their employees. So, in teaming up with them, OPNET is able to offer several courses at the conference that count towards training credits in various areas including Diagramming, Capacity Planning, Performance Management, Auditing and Compliance, and more.

Packed with plenty of information-sharing across OPNET’s entire user base, OPNETWORK takes place over a five day period from about 8am to 9pm.

“The sessions and discussions continue throughout the later part of the day towards the evening where we get together over dinner and talk about how our products should evolve,” explained  Jeyachandra. “So, OPNETWORK is where we get a lot of our ideas and where we share what we have done to the products since the previous year.”

As a specialized user conference, OPNETWORK is one of a kind in the industry in the sense that it is very engineering-focused, and very hands on.

“It’s a different kind of conference, which is why we have a loyal following of customers that come every year, and new customers also enjoy it a lot,” said Ankit Agarwal, associate vice president of Engineering at OPNET. “Customers attend, and can actually do labs where they are actually using the software to solve real problems.”

With this kind of hands on experience, OPNET gives customers an opportunity to actually talk to the engineers and product managers who are running and developing the product.

If you are interested in attending OPNETWORK 2013, stay tuned until next year!

To find out more about Gurmeet Lamba and OPNET Technologies (News - Alert), visit the company at ITEXPO. To be held Oct. 2-5 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, TX, ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. Lamba is speaking during “Migrating Your Apps to the Cloud: Planning and Key Considerations”. For more information on ITEXPO, click here.