The talk hasn’t really had any real impact on our business, unfortunately, as the two big lead passing efforts haven’t resulted in anything of substance coming our way.

So, rather than passively waiting for IBM to pass leads the The Fillmore Group, I am trying to reach out to the IBM sellers.  Being a believer in the value of face-to-face meetings and knowing I would be at IDUG this week, I asked my colleague Andrew Stenger to invite as many IBM sellers as possible to join Frank and me for a drink at IDUG so that we can say hello, introduce the value TFG brings to IM customers, and perhaps begin working together. 

Andrew sent the email invitation to a group of IBM salespeople, some of whom we have worked with, and some who have been recommended to us.  I arrived at IDUG last night, am hoping to meet some sellers interested in working with us. 

If you sell IBM Information Management software and would be interested in teaming with TFG consider this an invitation.  We are a Premier Business Partner that is:  1) authorized to deliver IBM training, 2) has a history of successful Information Management product implementations (including DB2 migrations from Oracle), and 3) is certified and ready to sell DB2, InfoSphere, Netezza and IDAA.  Most importantly, if you are at IDUG, we work to support the DB2 community – Frank is a DB2 Gold Consultant and is presenting at the conference, and Frank and I are both Information Champions.  Please stop by and meet Frank Fillmore and me at Peak’s Lounge Thursday at 5:30pm Mountain time.

If you are an IBM customer attending IDUG, and would benefit from working with a Business Partner that will help you get the best deal on IBM software, implement it properly, and understand it well enough to feel confident taking supporting it long-term, please stop by Peak’s too.  It would be even better to meet you!

• A White Paper, ”SmarterQuestions White Paper – Oracle to DB2 Migration Lessons Learned – Final“, commissioned by SmarterQuestions.org.  This is a case study on a worldwide Top Fifty integrated financial services firm and the lessons learned from their migration from Oracle to DB2.
• My IDUG presentation, “Zero Outage Oracle to DB2 Migrations“, on reducing or eliminating the application outage window during such a migration.

Please post you comments on the blog.  I welcome the feedback.

• On Wednesday, May 16 from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. a Replication Special Interest Group (SIG) will be held in Room 110.  Senthil Chandramohan of IBM will be co-leading the SIG with me.  Jenny Pang of Nationwide will be the moderator.  The purpose of the session:

“Meet industry experts and develop a better understanding of the best practices to support a replicated environment.  Are you faced with monitoring replication or determining the latency in replication?  Are your sources and targets in sync?  When problems occur, how do you resolve them?  Come and share your questions and experience with other professionals and other experts in the field of replication.”

• On Thursday, May 17 from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. I will deliver “Zero Outage Oracle to DB2 Migrations” (Session G09) in Room 112.  Replication figures prominently in reducing a migration outage window.  The abstract:

“IBM has enabled the Oracle PL/SQL API’s in DB2 for Linux, Unix, and Windows v9.7; 97% of Oracle application code will work unmodified. So, how best to migrate the Oracle data to DB2? The IBM Data Migration Tool (IDMT) fosters a batch migration which requires an application outage – backup, IDMT, restore, SET INTEGRITY – which can last for hours or days depending on the volume of data and complexity of the data model. What if my website, eCommerce, OLTP application can’t be down that long? Learn how a world-wide Top 50 financial institution migrated data from Oracle to DB2 with a minimal application outage using InfoSphere Replication Server’s heterogeneous replication from Oracle to DB2.”

I hope to see you in Denver.  Safe travel!

I was given the opportunity to discuss training, from my perspective, and while I really enjoyed the discussion, have to say it reminded me in a sort of frustrating way that training was the reason I came to work for The Fillmore Group seven years ago.  I thought it would be simple to take the lessons I’d learned in the Microsoft training world – seeding the market via education, exciting evangelists with training, using training to ensure customers get the most value from their software investments – and apply them to DB2 training. 

There is so much more that needs to be done.  Please listen to the podcast, and if you would like to help change the way IBM “positions” training, please drop me a line. 

The podcast is on Crysta’s site; click here.

To register, click here.

For starters, “Sidecar” is the nickname given to the IBM Data Analytics Accelerator, or IDAA (for short, if you consider a 4-letter acronym short).  The Sidecar, or IDAA, is a Netezza that attaches to an IBM mainframe and enables users to apply Netezza’s remarkable query speed to mainframe queries.  By doing so they can radically change the way they look at business analytics and evaluate their BI strategy.  Does an organization really need to move all the data to a separate warehouse to run reports?  How quickly can an organization run queries and put the results to work?

At The Fillmore Group we are convinced this is the next big thing and are excited to have consultants already skilled in the component parts – mainframe technology and Netezza – now becoming familiar with the installation process to get the Sidecar into production.    If you are as excited about it as we are, or just curious, let us know.

Therefore, for The Fillmore Group, having been reselling for a short time, the leads are few and far between.  When leads are assigned to us I try to be super responsive.

Seeing the lead in my Inbox this morning I logged on the IBM system used to manage leads and read the notes.  Something started nagging me, and I realized I recognized the contact’s name, as it is a bit unusual for a woman to be named Bert.  But she is, and she and I had an exchange a few months back about an IBM software purchase her organization was considering.

I searched through my “Sent Items” and found an email exchange documenting our conversation, in which she had been clear about two points:  1) her organization is not interested in purchasing the IBM solution; they attended a webcast because they were curious about it, and 2) she has no budget to purchase IBM software.

This feedback matched the notes in the sales record indicating the “lead” was generated by her attendance at a webcast…in 2008!

Apparently when I took the time to do the research and document that the customer was not interested in purchasing an IBM solution, whoever or whatever system determines which Mid Market leads should be closed out and which should be recycled decided this one should be recycled…and I received it again.

It’s almost 9:30 – I spent two hours trying to get the IBM systems to accept my updated notes and to close out this lead record so the customer is not bothered with yet another call about the purchase she does not intend to make, and more importantly, so that another Business Partner, and/or I,  don’t waste time marketing to Mid Market customers who aren’t interested in buying IBM products.

I can’t get the two hours back…but I will happily do two hours of research and/or proposal writing for any Mid Market customers who is interested in pursuing an IBM product purchase.  My guess is there is a Mid Market customer like Bert out there who really DOES want to know more about an IBM product and can’t get IBM’s attention.  If you are out there – call me – 443-956-0288.

The presentation materials: DB2 101 – IBM Information Management Software Portfolio Overview

The presentation materials: The Fillmore Group AESE Presentation 4.5.12

I was on the phone with my son a few days later and told him about the toast, and how I’d gotten goosebumps.  My son is 19; he went to daycare with the same girls he sat with in school and played with in the soccer league.  How far we’ve come, I told him.  When I was in school girls could chose ballet or the swim team – the options were THAT limited.  Ginni Rometty comes from my generation – she wasn’t raised in a world that offered her the same opportunities as the boys.  In spite of it, she has been enormously successful.

We all recognize hard work and persistence.  They aren’t enough; it takes even more to enable others to take notice and to really reshape their opinions and beliefs.  Power is definitely a factor.  I hope the membership committee at Augusta recognizes that Ginni Rometty has earned the right to be invited to join.  I hope Ginni uses her power for positive change and breaks another glass ceiling!