TEC 2010 Review and Summary

What a fantastic community our IBM Power Systems Users Group is! The success of TEC 2010 was a testament to the partnership between the community of College/University, Users, Vendors, IBM and a dedicated TUG. We had 356 conference registrations, which is more than a 300% increase from the year before and clear evidence that local IBM user communities are alive and well! TEC 2010 took many risks with this new project, including the following:

• All-new location Seneca@York University vs. traditional hotel
• Introduced new topics: Commercial Open Source and Mobile Computing
• Introduced new partners: Kryos, SugarCRM, Zend, RIM, xTuple, Nulogx

Typcial TEC Lab Session

New Location: Seneca @ York

The typical feedback was that attendees were pleasantly surprised with the quality and value of Seneca@York and that it exceeded their expectations. We knew that the location is central to the GTA, superbly equipped, modern and scalable. We also recognize the long-term commitment that Seneca has to the IBM marketplace (through the curriculum implemented by Prof. Russell Pangborn) and also the commitment IBM has to Seneca (through Linda Grigoleit at Partners in Education). We were concerned about how expansive the facility is; specifically the distances involved going between TEL and SEQ buildings. We did gain some feedback helping us to make the conference more intimate next year and placing more refreshment stations. We were also concerned about first time visitors being overwhelmed by the sheer size of the York U campus and getting lost finding the appropriate building, but they seemed to be able to manage that.

Typical feedback seemed to indicate that not just did attendees tolerate the change in location, but they embraced it and preferred it:
“Love Seneca location and class rooms. So much brighter and better than at the dark conference rooms at the old hotel”
– Doreen Hannon, Homewood Health Centre.

Other typical feedback was complimentary to the venue:
“The venue at Seneca/York was perfect – modern facilities, educational environment, etc. Volunteers and staff were very helpful – particularly the student assistants in each session”
– John Brenton, Seaway Marine Transport

TEC 2010 Crowd Anticipating Keynote Session

Both Seneca College and Seneca Professor Russell Pangborn received special recognition from IBM Academic Initiative during the Meeting of Members with Ian Jarman. Ian presented Seneca IT School of Computer Studies Chair Evan Weaver and Dean Laura Jo Gunter with a Tiffany Crystal Recognition Award from the IBM Academic Initiative. This will be proudly displayed in the Seneca showcase. In addition, IBM singled out Prof Russell Pangborn and awarded him a special recognition plaque for his contributions. CONGRATULATIONS!

Ian Jarman presents award to Seneca Dean Mary Jo Gunter and IT Chair Evan Weaver

Prof Russell Pangborn accepts recignition award form IBM

New Topics

While we still cherish our past and existing partners, for TEC 2010 we polled our users and community leaders to see what new topics have traction and are interesting to IBM users in 2010 and beyond. Two topics stood out early and often. Initiated by our RIM-sponsored blowout MoM with John DeRoos, we saw early on in 2009 that the TUG community was fascinated with all things BlackBerry and mobile. How do we extend our applications out to BlackBerry and other mobile devices? We topped this off with a visit to RIM DevCon in San Francisco, where we witnessed first-hand the magnitude, momentum and energy behind the mobile app dev market.

The second market, and one that gained traction with the advent of the global recession, was to use open source software in commercial enterprises. The quality of software, amount of traction, size of communities and rapid value to customers, was what stood out. Open source has grown up from its Linux/Apache roots and now contains a colossal application portfolio rooted in PHP and MySQL. In addition, Commercial Open source means that the software is not only good and widely used, but properly supported and licensed, so it can fit any size of enterprise. IBM has nurtured open source on IBM systems through excellent support of LINUX, Apache PHP (Zend) and MySQL.

For the first time, TUG’s conducted and Executive Breakfast done in conjunction with the Schulich School of Business at York University. It was held at the Private dining room in the Executive Learning Center. What a success! Attendees said it was the single most exciting breakfast in TUG history. If missed it, you really missed out. The 55 person capacity crowd was filled with movers and shakers form the investee. We had over 30 registered company IT execs, Software CEOs, local partner firm executives, private investors, Venture Capital fund mangers, Senior IT faculty and more. The session was electric! Schulich offers an spectacular backdrop for executive events, given it is Canada’s top ranged MBA school and has extraordinary modern and lavish executive education faculties. Larry Augustin’s Commercial Open Source message resonated with the Executive Breakfast and TEC conference keynote crowd. Larry is the commercial open source frontiersman and venture fund backer. He set about to convince the audience that the time is right for commercial open source. “Just as no one got fired to buying IBM in earlier days, today nobody gets fired for buying commercial open source”. Larry argues convincingly that Open Source is now widely is now accepted in the enterprise, constitutes very high quality software and has the backing and tail wind of the industry behind it were made. Attendees seeing Larry left inspired and energized and certain they been part of a classic TUG moment!

Larry Augustin addresses TEC 2010

Here are some typical comments from the conference evaluation sheets:

• “Unmatched keynote speakers. Both of them. I wish I had more of chance to talk to Larry and Zeev afterwards.”
• “Open Source theme – terrific and timely – but I felt the techies would benefit from more sessions with real life practical examples and how-to instruction/demonstration of the open source.”
• “Top grade ‘traditional’ presenters (Jon Paris, Susan Gantner, Alison Butterill, George Farr, Joel Tendler and the others whom I didn’t get to see) and the group from Kryos – all enthusiastic and encouraging.”
• “The fact that our Commercial Open Source Exec Breakfast and Keynote with Larry Augustin (CEO SugarCRM) – together with our PHP Keynote with Zeev Suraski – were all at capacity, is further testament that we got our topics right.

Bird's eye view TEC LMA Keynote

New Partnerships

We had excellent sponsor support from old friends and Gold sponsors, such as Databorough, Silver Sponsors such as Midrange, Lansa, Arcad, IBM Rational and 19 excellent Bronze sponsors. See www.tug.ca/tec/Sponsors.html. But adding new partners creates new energy and excitement, especially if they align with the chosen new themes. We met up with Kryos though RIM at the BlackBerry Developer Conference in San Francisco. Kryos became TEC 2010 Platinum sponsor and conducted an entire track of well-attended mobile enablement sessions. “Kryos was delighted to be a part of the TEC 2010 and the event exceeded our expectations. Our meetings and discussions with the attendees were truly engaging and we very much enjoyed discussing opportunities for applying mobile technology to their business processes. We established new contacts and discovered a number of mutually beneficial opportunities. Congratulations the organizers and supporters of TEC 2010 on a great event.” – Shawn Derby, CEO Kryos Systems

Based on the huge interest and popularity of PHP on IBM i and other environments, we formed close relations with Michael Scarpato, Zend IBM Alliance Director, and were able to entice Zeev Suraski, Zend cofounder and co-author of PHP, to come from Israel to attend TEC 2010. Here is what Michael has to say: “The Toronto User Group’s 17th Annual Technical Education Conference in April was a great success from Zend’s perspective. In service of this year’s focus on commercial open source, we were delighted that Zeev Suraski (Zend’s co-founder and CTO) was able to contribute a keynote session covering Enterprise PHP as well as interactive demos of the leading PHP development and deployment solutions. As a return contributor to the annual event, Zend was impressed by the 3x increase in attendance, the high level of participant engagement, and the insightful questions during/after the sessions. Thanks to the efforts of the TUG leadership and the collaboration with Seneca College at York University, the theme for the conference was indeed realized: ‘The Odyssey Continues.’” – Michael Scarpato, Zend IBM Alliance Director

Zeev Suraski KeynoteZeev Keynote crowd

Special thanks to Linda Cole from IBM Canada Lab. Although IBM has always made a major contribution to our TEC agenda and we have always valued their cooperation, Linda and the IBM Canada crew from Rational did an exceptionally good job this year, providing quality sessions and speakers and hosting the fully attended Open Labs at IBM Canada. Also, we were able to secure extraordinary gifted speakers for our AIX track, including Joel Tendler and Jay Kruemcke. Feedback from AIX-based attendees suggested they were flabbergasted by the quality of our speakers and session and will help us reach out to the broader AIX community next year and do so much earlier. Look for TUG to have TEC 2011 plans in place by September 2010.

Joel Tendler @ TEC2010

It takes incredible energy and commitment on behalf of a dedicated group of volunteer to put an event like this together. Meet our TEC 2010 committee: Kumar Rajendra, Vaughn Dragland, Dale Perkins, Ed Jowett, Russell Pangborn, Tom Zamara, Jay Burford, Ross Howatson, Léo Lefebvre, Glenn Gundermann, Mark Buchner, Wende Boddy, and Aziz Saleh.

Thank you to all involved. We will keep you posted for TEC 2011 plans. Please consider joining the TEC 2011 committee!

Thanks!

Thanks folks! TEC 2010 was a big hit. We had 356 registered attendees and over 400 badges made. Folks loved the new Seneca location. We had outstanding feedback for our executive breakfast, quite possibly the most exiting and best attended ever. All sessions had consistently high ratings and good attendance. We receive kudos for our speakers and themes Thanks to all involvedwith specialthanks to platinum sponsor  Kryos as well as  SugarCRM and Zend.

Where is TEC 2010? Where to go and stay…

Where is TEC 2010?

The 2-day conference on April 27-28 is being held at York University’s Keele Street campus. This is a central GTA (Greater Toronto Area) location, which makes it easily  accessible to most GTA residents by public transit or car. The optional third day,  featuring open hands-on IBM product labs, is being held April 29 at the IBM Canada Laboratory in Markham, on Warden Ave.

Where do I go?

York University is bound to the north by Steeles Ave., to the south by Finch Ave, to the east by Keele Street and to the west by Jane Street. 

The conference spans 4 buildings on the east side of campus: therefore the York Boulevard Entrance, off Keele Street is the preferred entrance. Alternately, you can take Sentinel (midway between Jane & Keele) north from Finch, straight to The Pond Road.

Here are the campus buildings involved:

Stephen E Quinlan building (SEQ): This is home to TEC2010 and Seneca@York.  This is where you’ll find: Registration, our hospitality suite (Kaleidoscope), vendor showcase, the cafeteria for breakfast and lunch, and the amphitheatre room (1206) hosting our main track.

Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) building is immediately next to (west of) the SEQ building.   All of the TEC breakout sessions will be held here:  T2016-2110 and T3131-3133. By following the showcase corridor (WHERE THE VENDOR BOOTHS ARE SET UP), the very next building is TEL, where you go up the stairwell either one OR two floors. Directions will be posted.

Bennet Center for Student Services . This is the new, covered, multi-level parking garage on the south east side of campus. You will receive a ticket when you enter. All paying TEC Conference attendees will receive a voucher to use upon exit. Without the voucher, you will need to use cash or credit card to for parking. There are automated kiosks set up on the second floor. For those who know York U, feel free to park wherever you are comfortable. First time visitors may find it easiest to use “The Pond Road” entrance which leads directly to the garage.

Easiest direction to Parking garage: The ‘Pond Rd‘  gives direct access “

Seymour Schulich School of Business- Executive Learning Center. Directly to the North of the Bennet Services/Garage is the Schulich School of Business. It is diagonally (North East) across from the SEQ building. This building contains the hotel accommodation and will also host our Executive Breakfast. Schulich is one of Canada’s very TOP MBA schools and has residence accommodations for their programs. TUG has formed a partnership to facilitate your stay there.

Where should I stay?

For convenience, we recommend staying at the SCHULICH School of Business Executive Leaning Center. See http://www.schulich.yorku.ca/SSB-Extra/elc.nsf/docs/About

Phone: (416) 650-8300
Fax: (416) 650-8333
Website: www.elc.schulich.yorku.ca
E-mail: reservations@schulich.yorku.ca

TEC has reserved a large block of rooms at Schulich, but we’re told they will be sold out shortly.

For overflow, and if you do NOT wish to stay on campus, we recommend staying at the intersection of Hwy 7 and 400. There are three suitable hotels:

1. Courtyard Marriott  http://www.marriott.com/hotels/maps/travel/yyzvn-courtyard-toronto-vaughan/  

2. Hilton Garden Inn http://hiltongardeninn.hilton.com/en/gi/hotels/index.jhtml?ctyhocn=YYZVAGI

3. Marriott Residence Inn http://www.marriott.com/hotels/fact-sheet/travel/YYZTV

Any one of these is fine. This area is a very busy part of the GTA and traffic can be heavy. In mild traffic, the travel time to York is 5 minutes. (Head east to Keele, then head South to York Boulevard)

Near to the hotels are many large entertainment and retail outlets (and a very large number of restaurants and establishments, all with jumbo parking lots). A rental car is recommended.

TTC Routes to Seneca@York for TEC2010

For more info, please go to TTC Routes to TEC2010 at Seneca

Zeev Suraski comments on PHP and Zend

IBM i Goes Web: Zend’s Zeev Suraski on PHP and IBM i

Since we started cooperating with IBM to bring the Zend stack over to the IBM i platform, we’ve seen a variety of exciting changes and opportunities.  I would like to take a few minutes and explore a little about where PHP has come on IBM i and where we see it going.

What is PHP and who is Zend?

As you might know, PHP is an open source scripting language used to build dynamic web pages. Over more than 10 years, PHP has gained massive following, and is now powering a third(!) of all web applications, including facebook and Wikipedia. Simply put, Zend is the PHP company. It was founded in 1997 by Andi Gutmans (today Zend’s CEO) and myself (today Zend’s CTO). Together, we rewrote the parsing engine for version 3 of PHP, a project that helped boost the popularity PHP. We later spearheaded the development of PHP 4 and 5, and continue to contribute to a number of open source projects, including PHP itself, Zend Framework – a highly successful web application framework, and Eclipse PHP Development Tools project – a popular free PHP code editor. Zend also delivers commercial products and services to thousands of companies that rely on PHP for their business-critical applications:

• Zend Studio is our Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which is used by thousands of professional PHP developers
• Zend Server is a an enterprise-grade PHP runtime environment that includes a full web application stack as well as various management capabilities, such as application monitoring, problem diagnostics and performance optimization
• Zend’s services team provides technical support, training on PHP and Zend’s products, and consulting 

What is the Zend Solution for IBM i?

The Zend solution for IBM includes Zend Server for IBM i and Zend Studio for IBM i.  These two products comprise the best environment for PHP developers who are looking to grow beyond RPG, COBOL and CL.   For the rest of the article I’d like to focus on Zend Server for IBM i and the interesting opportunities it brings to the i platform.

Zend Server for IBM i enables deployment and management of PHP applications – both off-the-shelf and custom developed.  It belongs to the latest generation of runtime environments from Zend, and supersedes two previous generation products – Zend Core for i5/OS and Zend Platform for i5/OS.  A Community Edition (CE) version of Zend Server is available free of charge, and comes with one year of free support, courtesy of IBM.

At the heart of Zend Server CE for IBM i we find PHP itself, surrounded by a rich selection of extension modules, performance-boosting components and the PHP Toolkit for IBM i.  The toolkit allows direct access to IBM i-specific features such as calling RPG programs, reading from data queues and retrieving spooled files.  Zend Server for IBM i unlocks the power of PHP, with its rich ecosystem of thousands of free applications and millions of developers – onto the IBM i platform.

The commercial edition of Zend Server includes all of the capabilities of Zend Server CE, while adding a plethora of features for improved performance, application monitoring and root cause analysis.

Zend Server is designed to improve PHP’s performance in a variety of ways, including optimizing and caching bytecode, caching data and caching output.  Some of it will work out of the box, improving performance without requiring modifications of any kind to the PHP application.  Other parts require configuration or minor code changes.  All in all, Zend Server’s performance boosting components typically yield between 2x and 10x performance gains, depending on the situation.  Thanks to focused optimization work done in Zend Server for the IBM i, it is much, much faster than Zend Core and Zend Platform, typically as much as 3x.

On the management front, Zend Server includes setting management of your PHP-based server, application monitoring and code tracing.   You can think of Zend Server’s monitoring as the PHP equivalent of the QSYSOPR message queue for PHP applications.  It is your extra pair of eyes that is constantly watching over your applications and capturing diagnostic data when issues arise.  Code tracing takes monitoring to the next level by providing the software equivalent of a black box flight recorder – showing not only what happened when the error occurred, but also the entire execution path that lead to it.  Unlike RPG applications where you have to respond with a “D” to capture the important dump information when an escape message is thrown, Zend Server captures all of the information every time! This means that developers and well as system administrators can access a lot of detail about the issue, thus making the resolution process much quicker.  Best of all – monitoring and code tracing have been designed with performance in mind, and can work in a live production environment, where reproducing problems is challenging and sometimes just impossible. Pinpointing and fixing application issues has never been easier, in PHP or in any other language.

Finally – Zend Server includes a 5250 Bridge, enabling communications between PHP and green-screen applications.  The bridge allows developers to web-enable their green-screen applications while using PHP, create different workflows, merge several screens into one HTML form, and more.  The possibilities are truly endless.

Zend Server CE and Zend Studio for IBM i are both still included as part of your IBM maintenance.  When IBM releases the new version of IBM i, Zend Server CE will be pre-loaded on the machine with all of the other products that IBM ships.  This makes it even easier for IBM i shops to experiment with and adopt PHP while continuing to demonstrate IBM’s commitment to PHP as a strategic solution for all IBM i customers.

For those of you who have experienced with Zend Core – you’ll be happy to hear that thanks to the combined efforts of IBM and Zend, Zend Server no longer requires two separate Apache instances in order to operate.  Zend Server implements PHP via a FastCGI which negates the need for a PASE Apache server.  All Apache configuration work is done exclusively in the IBM Apache instance using IBM’s well built and powerful administration tools.   This simplifies the administration of Apache servers and greatly improves performance, as there is no longer a relay between the Apache servers before content is delivered to the browser.

Another welcome change is that unlocking the full potential of the commercial edition of Zend Server and all of its features only involves punching in a license key – no installations or setup are necessary.

I am truly enthusiastic about the release of Zend Server for IBM i.  With highly increased performance, simpler architecture, Code Tracing and simplified installation – PHP on IBM i has never been better and it’s never been easier.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed working on it.

Happy PHPing!

Zeev Suraski, CTO and co-founder, Zend

Larry Augustin Keynote speaker @ TEC2010

 

TUG is very fortunate to have Larry Augustin, an industry icon from Silicon Valley in California,  as our featured TEC conference keynote speaker.

Larry’s bio is as follows:

Larry Augustin is an angel investor and advisor to early stage technology companies.  He currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Appcelerator, Compiere, DeviceVM, DotNetNuke, Fonality, Hyperic, Medsphere, Pentaho and SugarCRM.  Previously he was a Director of JBoss (acquired by Red Hat Software), XenSource (acquired by Citrix), SourceForge (NASDAQ: LNUX, previously VA Linux) and Linux International (LI).  He also serves as a Director of the nonprofit industry consortium The Linux Foundation.  One of the group who coined the term “Open Source”, he has written and spoken extensively on Open Source worldwide.  Worth Magazine named him to their list of the Top 50 CEOs in 2000.  Previously he served as interim CEO of Medsphere.  From September 2002 to December 2004 he was a Venture Partner at Azure Capital Partners where he helped lead Azure’s investments in Zend and Medsphere.  In 1993 he founded VA Linux (now SourceForge, NASDAQ:LNUX), where he served as CEO until August 2002 and led the company through an IPO in December 1999.  In November 1999 he launched SourceForge.net, the world’s largest Open Source software development community.  Also at VA Linux, he acquired Andover.net, merging SourceForge.net, Linux.com, Slashdot, and other well-known Open Source Internet sites to form the Open Source Development Network (OSDN).  Larry holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Notre Dame.  Larry can be found online at http://lmaugustin.com.

 

Larry will comment on the evolution of open source and note the high level of business value available today through Commercial Open Source. Open source today is already pervasive in the enterprise infrastructure but  it has evolved to such a degree that enterprise quality CRM, ERP, Commerce, BI, Analytics etc systems ready for industrial deploy. Larry describes describe enterprise open source software as a  ”safe bet” for the next decade and provide examples of customers.

Larry will comment on the benefits of Commercial Open Source, including the rapid time to value, cost, skills availability, quality and support while addressing misconceptions that may exist, especially about reliability.

IBM systems shops are becoming familiar with Open Source through LAMP: Linux, PHP, the Apache Web server, and the MySQL database and PHP. IBM i 6.1 for instance runs any i/OS release that supports Zend Core PHP and MySQL such as SugarCRM. These customers are looking for a business solutions that provide rapid ROI, and they don’t care if it’s open source or not. Many of the traditional ERP vendors in the AS/400 market have not kept up with modern Web-based technology.

Software as a Service offerings and Cloud Computing options are of high interest to IBM customers, and Commercial Open Source is enabled for even more rapid market penetration through this delivery. Larry will comment on various cloud strategies available to customers and how Commercial Open Source fits in. Expect Larry to provide his candid opinion on IBM systems and channels.

GTA TEC Market feedback

Over the past few months, I’ve spent plenty time on the phone and have had discussions with many of our IBM user community members. In fact, my records say I’m approaching 100 IT managers  that I’ve personally talked to. I thoroughly enjoy this part of my User Group duties, and one of the most fascinating parts of these discussions is the opportunity to observe and record IT trends. Often, our local trends reflect global paradigms. What are the technical and sociological trends of our IBM Power Systems user community concerning the following? :

• Are customers building or buying applications?
• Where and how are the applications hosted?
• What tools are used for development and customization?
• What OS and platform is used?
• How is the economy is affecting IT?

Buy vs. build:  ERP vendors now define the Corporate IT landscape. A majority of customers have seen their corporate headquarters (wherever that may be), dictate a global standard ERP and thus cause upheaval to the status quo. The ERP vendors are an oligopoly: they may be Microsoft (MS Dynamics, . net development and Windows OS), Oracle (increasingly Oracle does not just refer to the DB and app but a complete solution stack involving SUN HW and Solaris and Fusion Middleware) or SAP (SAP is often implemented with IBM Power systems). While customer seem to be willing to define themselves by their anchored ERP (“we are wall-to-wall SAP”), but the reality is far more complex and involves integration of variety of new systems such as CRM, Mobile, Business Intelligence, Analytics, Web 2.0 and legacy systems to the ERP core.

What this translates to locally is large cutbacks in local development departments and an emphasis shift from development to integration. Characteristically, customers grapple with how to transition to the new ERP system and how to accommodate or maintain specific features and business process that had been buried in the existing, traditional applications. These projects don’t happen overnight (if at all) and typically have 3-5 year windows.

Recentralization: Datacenters are becoming more centralized. TUG members tell me about datacenters being consolidated,  often in the U.S. or somewhere other than home. This provides the company greater control over IT assets, including: increasing utilization rates, scalability, energy efficiency  and workload management issues, as well as very specific HA/DR requirements. But, for many, it can mean a lottery to see who get to own the datacenter and who does not. If you happen to own operations today, you will care INTENSELY about the topics and SLA. Furthermore, BladeCenter, Cloud computing and IBM Smart Business appliances reflect the selection of operational choices and customers typically also find increasing emphasis on their network and network architecture.

Platform Shifting: IBM i systems tend to “hang on” to existing workloads that have been running there for decades, often procrastinating OS and HW upgrades. In the meantime, AIX and Linux shops are aggressively growing and runnig  exciting new workloads. There is often a “silo effect” amongst different operational groups and they don’t always understand or work with each other. If you are an “i” person, it behooves you either to speed up your retirement plans or you start to expand your platform skills. If you are a UNIX user, you should be looking at AIX as the worlds #1 and #1 growth UNIX system . The good news is that by modernizing your IBM systems, a single POWER system can be virtualized and sliced-and-diced and dynamically reconfigured to run all of i, AIX and Linux at the same time using POWERVM.

Application Development:  Overall, I note a shocking lack of AD tools modernization. Far too many i developers System i still use “old school” tooling such as SEU, PDM, & QUERY/400. AIX users have even less of an identifiable trend and have even older tools and languages. While this may be rooted in experience and long term familiarization, reluctance to modernize one’s AD toolset can no longer been seen as a viable AD strategy. I hear many customers tell me that they have tried new tools (WDSc for instance) in the past, but had some setback or disappointment that has kept them from trying again. I see the interest in tolls modernization as high, albeit with some reservations and hesitation from existing customers that say “Show me, IBM”… even if they are not from Missouri..

Economic and cost woes: The economy is on everyone’s mind and it affects people both personally as they fear for jobs, and professionally. Folks are open to creative use of Open Source. If you really want to cut costs, start thinking of complete open source solution stacks that go far beyond “LAMP” (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) and include CRM (SugarCRM),Content Management (DocuWiki), ERP systems (Compiere) BI (Pentaho) Analytics (InfoBright ) etc Cloud Computing. Members tell me they want to keep up their technical vitality to ensure their skills are in demand. They want and need to keep networking with vendors and peers.

How TEC 2010 helps:

• Shows how to leverage open source to cut costs, using, for example:  PHP, and SugarCRM, MediaWiki.  Highlights include 24A: “Keynote: Enterprise PHP” with Zeev Suraski, co-founder of Zend, and 14A Keynote: “Commercial Open Source: Smart IT in the next Decade” with Larry Augustin as well as a customer-led story , 25E: “Deploying MediaWiki on i”5 with John Brenton from SMT.
• Dynamic infrastructure with Power 7: AIX, i , Power 7. We have a large number of sessions with excellent speakers. For instance we bring Power Systems AIX guru Joel Tendler for 3, deep, Power7 architecture topics.We have Greg Hintermeister for sessions regarding IBM Director and PowerVM. Jay Kruemcke IBM’s AIX product manager has three sessions on AIX while there are number of i session including OS update with Ian Jarman. We have cool practical sessions such as 13H: “Making testing simple and audit compliance”
• Get more out of existing systems and integrate them to new ones: We have an entire track work of modernization lectures, reengineering sessions and PHP and networking labs. Highlights session include 13F: “Modernizing apps using design recovery”, 16C: “ RPG XML and Web Services”, 13F: “Refactoring Legacy Applications “ 12C: “PHP for RPG Programmers., 13B “Build your own IPV6”, 12E: “Extend i apps to WebSphere“
• Make a splash: Be a hero. Add real business value by getting on the biggest IT trend: Mobile applications… extend your existing enterprise systems to BlackBerry devices and make it easy by exploiting middleware. Highlight sessions include 15A: “Best practices for BlackBerry App Dev”, 22M: “BlackBerry Apps Customer Case Study” ,21H “Gauging Readineess for BlackBerry apps”, 23B:  “Kryos Velocity Hands-On Labs” 
• Re –tool you AD. Let IBM show you, the new news on Rational AD products and compiler Highlights include 13A: “Rational for Power Systems”, 16F “Rational Team Concert”,  21G “New Dev tools for AIX”

 

Our web site is the most current source of info on TEC2010, with tracks, session abstracts and speaker bios. Keep up your technical vitality and ensure your skills are in demand. Network with peers, partners and vendors

Check us out at www.tug.ca.

See you at TEC 2010!

TUG Executive Series to coincide with TEC 2010

TUG starts its Executive Series…..
oriented at LOB and execs of our member firms, coincident with TEC2010.
Seating is restricted to Company or IT executives and mangement. 

TUG Executive Series: Commercial Open Source for the Enterprise Tue, April 27th, 2010 – Toronto Ontario. Seating is limited register now View this message online.

Commercial Open Source for the Enterprise  Tuesday April 27th, 2010 LOCATION: Schulich School of Business Private Dining Room, Executive Learning Centre 4700 Keele Street,  (56 Fine Arts Road) Toronto, ON   M3J 1P3 ITINERARY: Registration & Breakfast:   7:15 am – 8:30 am Session with Larry Augustin:  8:30 am – 10:00 am Running your business in a tight and competitive economy, you understand that your approach to enterprise applications can be critical to the future of the organization. Using Open Source, often in combination with Cloud Computing, promises dramatic cost savings and increase in flexibility and responsiveness to business needs. Our session explores the maturation of open source for commercial purposes and the steady increase in its value; and proposes Enterprise Open Source as a “safe bet” at the dawn of 2010. A 2008 Forrester Research survey recorded that 58% of IT execs use open source for mission critical applications, 79% within their applications infrastructure. While cost advantage is obvious, fully 80% cite factors other than cost such as open standards support, avoidance of vendor lock-in, ease of integration.   Join me and special guest Speaker Larry Augustin as we explore Commercial Open Source and use of Open Source in enterprise including cost and risk benefit comparison to proprietary software. We’ll share perspectives and ideas and offer practical guidance .   Speaker:   Larry Augustin CEO, SugarCRM   Larry is an Open Source pioneer, “angel investor”, and advisor to early stage technology companies from Cupertino California. He currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Appcelerator, Compiere, DeviceVM, DotNetNuke, Fonality, Hyperic, Medsphere, Pentaho and SugarCRM.   One of the group who coined the term “Open Source”, he has written and spoken extensively on Open Source worldwide. Worth Magazine named him to their list of the Top 50 CEOs in 2000.   From 2002 to 2004 he was a Venture Partner at Azure Capital Partners. In 1993 he founded VA Linux (now SourceForge, NASDAQ:LNUX) serving as CEO until August 2002. While CEO he launched SourceForge.net and led the company through an IPO in December 1999.   Larry holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Notre Dame.   Key areas of discussion include:   A brief overview of Commercial Open Source and its benefits; Application Quality; Cloud Computing and Open Source; Strategies to dramatically lower costs and break vendor lock; Where to start in assessing and mitigating risk associated with Commercial Open Source. Join your peers to share innovation, ideas, challenges and experiences, and get insight from market makers..   To confirm your attendance to this event, please click here. Admission is $50 (FREE to qualified IT executives and invited guests). Remember, seating is limited, so don’t delay. I hope to see you there.   Best regards,      Mark Buchner Executive Director Toronto Users Group for Power Systems

Sponsored by

TEC Announcements from Feb 17 “Unleash the Power of Innovation” Event at IBM Canada Lab

Whether you were a TUG member or just interested in IBM Power Systems and Software, our special meeting: Unleash the Power Of Innovation, was the place to be on Feb 17.

On behalf of the TUG group I’d like to thank Karen Hunt, Linda Cole, George Farr,  and Kathy Gregson, along with a big team of IBMers,  for helping to make it possible. It’s a very exciting event because… well …….we sure need a spark in the midst of the WEAK economy … and IBM gave us just that in the form of POWER 7.  It positively affects the entire system, software and solution ecosystem.

We had two special guests, flown in from the US, to support the event which was, yes, a LIVE event … not a virtual one. 

Hayden Lindsay, VP of Rational and Danny Mace helped us understand how to Power our Innovation with Rational Software.

Chuck Wallace, from Rochester Minnesota detailed the POWER 7 announcement.

After learning about all the fantastic new possibilities, what do you do next?

Here’s what I would recommend:

• Learn more about technologies: Increase your technical vitality and your value to your employer
• Identify ways to apply these skills in your business, to solve real problems, and help to “Make this a smarter planet”.
• Network with peers and community.

At TUG we made it easy for you to do all that. It’s TEC2010!

TEC 2010 is the annual Technical Education Conference for IBM Systems users, organized by the Toronto Users Group for Power Systems.  

TEC is being conducted this year in a brand new format, at Seneca @ York, which promises far greater variety and subjects of interest than in previous years, as well as opportunity for far more hands-on learning experiences and greater interaction with industry peers.

 Don’t be confused about where this is… it’s at the York University Campus… in the Stephen E. Quinlan (SEQ) Building,  Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Building as well as Schulich School of Business, Canada’s Top MBA program at the Keele Campus.

One the biggest benefits is the scalability we have,  and deep enablement with hands-on labs. Seneca @ York (which operates in the SEQ building) is part of the IBM Power Academic Initiative, with directors Linda Grigoleit in Rochester, and Russ Pangborn, Professor at Seneca. Russ, who serves on the board of the Toronto User Group, also  teaches a full IBM curriculum and enables integration with large-scale technology infrastructure and IBM Power Systems.  Both these individuals deserve extra credit.

We picked important themes to match what we believe and hear our members want. Two of them, we will get a good taste for later today, and three others I want to highlight right now.

TUGPOWER7MOM This is a link to the PowerPoint slides.

POWER 7

You expect deeper dives into the latest POWER7 HW and Software announcements, and we will deliver. Ian Jarman is coming as rep for IBM STG with Keynote and detailed sessions. Greg Hintermeister and others are coming to detail Systems Director and other STG software.

The new and exciting news is that we have a really strong AIX line-up. I went to the POWER 7 champions meeting in Austin Texas, where 400 top WW AIX technical professionals were assembled.  I went there with a mission.. I wanted to find, meet and invite whoever is the “Frank Soltis” of AIX, TEC. I found him. He was so obviously skilled, uniquely experienced, and the  Alpha-leader of the technical community, that I accomplished my goal. So I’m thrilled now to report that Dr. Joel Tendler, a Unix, POWER, RS/6000 pioneer and community leader from Austin Texas, has accepted our invitation.

Tell your UNIX and AIX brethren. ..Even if you aren’t an AIX user today.. this may make you think about it in the future.

 

AD- Rational

All the AD topics we hear about these days—by attending TEC 2010, you’ll gain a much better understanding of how they work. We have full tracks detailing AD tools and Rational Software. If you are a developer, you must come to TEC 2010.

Commercial Open  Source: PHP,SugarCRM

Whenever I poll our users, PHP and open source consistently come up.  PHP has been one of the most popular topics in the history of TUG.  So, the TEC committee members didn’t fool around, but went  straight to the source. Look now.. the author of PHP and co –founder of Zend, Zeev Surkaski, will be our TEC keynote speaker and spend time in technical labs, showcasing his product. So if you are teed up to learn PHP, initiate or finish projects… I can’t think of a better investment of your time.

Then there is Larry Augustin.

I got to know Larry Augustin over the past year. He is a Silicon Valley-based “angel investor” and advisor to early-stage technology companies.  He currently serves on the Boards of Directors of at least 9 companies:  Appcelerator, Compiere, DeviceVM, DotNetNuke, Fonality, Hyperic, Medsphere, Pentaho and SugarCRM.  Previously, he was a Director of JBoss (acquired by Red Hat Software), XenSource (acquired by Citrix), SourceForge (NASDAQ: LNUX, previously VA Linux) and Linux International (LI).  He also serves as a Director of the non-profit industry consortium, The Linux Foundation.  One of the group who coined the term “Open Source”, he has written and spoken extensively on Open Source worldwide.  Worth Magazine named him to their list of the Top 50 CEOs in 2000 after he took VALinux public.

Larry holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. 

Larry’s themes for TEC 2010 involve the Commercialization of Open Source. As a techie, you will want to catch him as conference keynote. If you are executive, why not join Larry for an exclusive private executive breakfast?  Commercial Open Source, such as SugarCRM, is a big trend for this next decade.

Mobile Development- BlackBerry

It started back with our famous RIM Meeting of Members last Spring, which drew an overflow audience, and since then, I noted that the market’s thirst for information regarding mobile enablement of applications seems insatiable. I went to RIM “Devcon” in November and was influenced by the buzz, the sheer momentum of people and skills. That’s where we met up with Shawn Derby from Kryos, the vendor which is also endorsed and mentioned by John DeRoos  at our RIM membership meeting. Kryos is now a major, PLATINUM sponsor of TEC 2010, and together we have a full track of related sessions helping you understand why and how to get mobile applications. Extending back-office applications to the mobile platform as a way to further extend the ROI on smartphone investments & further improve productivity. We’ll focus on showing you how you can extend your existing Systems apps to the BlackBerry.

Modernization

Modernization is a continuous theme for POWER systems users. Automating application enhancements; recovering design; sprucing up legacy databases;, regenerating Java code, are all included topics. Databorough is a vital part of our TEC plans, as well as a Gold level sponsor. Your existing investments  in application software are invaluable to your business. Don’t throw them out. Instead, leverage and harvest the valuable business logic you already have as you apply modern technology.

Plus, for the first time in Canada, we’ll hear (from IBM) about “Smart Business”, and their plans and value propositions, from on-site cloud or appliance-based computing , for small & medium-sized businesses.

We have plenty other “regular” sessions, that long time TEC attendees have come to love and expect.  Key leaders in the field and consultants, such as Mel Beckman, Jon Paris, and Susan Gantner, will expertly cover timely topics of interest to IBM i users and developers.

BOTTOM LINE

We want to engage in “TEC talk” with you. There are special “early bird” rates available. As a non-profit organization, we’ve done everything  we can to keep our costs down, and I done think this results in incomparable value. If you are anywhere in the GTA, the cost of this is just a fraction of the cost of airfare to Florida, Vegas or other typical meeting spots.

Finally, we are organizing Exec sessions, because company executives may not be interested in 2 days of technical conferencing. Special invitations are being mailed.

Thanks or following our blog..

Huge News: Dr. Joel Tendler to conduct AIX Sessions at TEC 2010

I just received confirmation that Dr. Joel M. Tendler, Executive I/T Architect, CSC Account Team — UNIX Architect has received the OK from IBM to attend our TEC 2010 and conducting
key sessions.

I met Joel at the recent POWER7 Champions meet in Austin and Joel, is, in fact, champion of champions and an internationally recognized UNIX and AIX “guru”. This should make TEC2010 irresistable to AIX user community.

Dr. Joel Tendler is currently an Executive IT Architect.  He transitioned to this position in the Fall of 2006 after spending 33 years in the IBM development laboratories.  Immediately prior to this assignment, Joel was responsible for IBM’s future RISC Systems Strategy in STG.  Previously, he was one of the lead POWER4 and POWER5 architects, receiving IBM awards for his contributions to both POWER4 and POWER5 systems.  He has also held positions as the performance manager for IBM’s mainframe division, the VM design manager and the CMS development manager, a key component of IBM’s virtual machine product, now called zVM, among other positions. Joel is a member of the IEEE and holds several patents in the area of computer systems architecture.  Joel has a B.E. degree from The Cooper Union and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Syracuse University.