Frank and I attended an IBM Business Partner event in Philadelphia earlier this week where we met with several IBM’ers supporting Business Partner initiatives in 2016.  Each of the specialists presented their “best of” solutions to the partners in attendance, and then patiently answered our many questions (mostly mine – sorry team!)

The final preparations for our Woodberry Kitchen lunch event are underway:   Frank and I are polishing the presentation, IBM’s Andrew Levine and Warren Heising are tracking down answers to my Cloud deployment “what if?” questions, Megan is gathering gold coins for attendees who ask Frank good technical questions, and Jolanta at Woodberry Kitchen has me salivating with her menu recommendations.

If you will be in Baltimore April 21st and haven’t registered yet, please do!  Register HERE.

One result of the IBM Global Skills Initiative is the complexity around course scheduling and registration as there are now five Global Training Partners managing these processes.

The Fillmore Group is aligned with our software distributor, Arrow ECS, for IBM Analytics training delivery.  Through our relationship with Arrow we deliver public, open enrollment IBM Analytics classes in our Towson, Maryland, classroom, as well as distance learning, remote classes, and private classes.

Finding our classes on the Arrow website can be a challenge, but there are two ways to do this.

#1   Click here for classes scheduled for the next 60 days

This link will take you to the pre-sorted courses scheduled to run at The Fillmore Group in the next 60 days.

#2   Visit the Arrow ECS website and sort courses

If you would like to review the courses delivered by The Fillmore Group in Towson as well as courses delivered by other Arrow affiliated vendors in other locations, follow these instructions:

1. Click on https://ecsedu.arrow.com/ibm/us
2. At the top of the screen hover over or pull down “Scheduled and Distance Classes”
3. Click on “Training schedules”
4. Select “United States”
5.  In the list of locations, De-select “All”, then check “Towson”
6. Select “6 months” for the time period to display
7. Answer “No” to the “Show Only Guaranteed to Run” question
8. Select “All” for topics, hardware and software
9. Click the “See” button to display the classes

You should see a list of classes scheduled displayed like this.  The schedule contains dates and hyperlinks to register for individual sessions.

I hope this helps!  If can answer any questions on locating classes or navigating through to fjnd what you need, don’t hesitate to email (kim.may@thefillmoregroup.com) or call (443-956-0288) me.

The Fillmore Group 2H 2015 Class Schedule

With all the challenges IBM’s move to the Global Skills Initiative (aka outsourcing education) has created for DB2 users, please remember IBM classes do still exist and are available for the patient and persistent.  Fear not!  If you need training, we are prepared to help.

After seeing public training nosedive over the past two years we are now seeing a bit of a resurgence.  Are classes really running?  Well, in all honesty, not often.  However, we are seeing a few run here and there, and when they don’t, with our relationship with Arrow ECS (one of the five Global Training Partners) intact, we are learning to “collect” students interested in training, and either gather them together for classes, or provide private training at affordable rates.

I’ve just submitted our second half of 2015 public training class schedule to Arrow (see the attachment above) and expect to see the classes posted on the IBM training site (IBM.com/training) within the next couple weeks.  I welcome anyone looking for a class – whether it’s on my schedule or not – to contact me at kim.may@thefillmoregroup.com so that I can work some coordination magic for you.

We are looking forward to continuing our relationship with IBM Global Training Partner Arrow ECS is 2015.  Our schedule is up on the IBM training website, with the specific Arrow/The Fillmore Group classes listed and available for registration at:  https://ecsedu.arrow.com/ibm/us/index.html.

If you plan on taking a class early next year, I hope you will consider attending one of our classes, delivered in Towson, Maryland, just north of Baltimore.  We have great instructors, a comfortable classroom, and Baltimore offers some the best seafood in the world.

The complete list of classes is here.  I hope to see you in 2015!

I was on a call this morning with an IBM technical team to discuss our progress filling the seats in one of our upcoming free IDAA classes.  Not surprising, given the number of people on the call (and who they were!) we went a bit off topic and ended up chatting about services and what appears to be – to IBM customers and sellers at least – a shortage of skilled consultants available to help with the “tions” – replication, implementations, migrations and federation.

The Fillmore Group has skilled consultants available to support these efforts, at rates that are typically about half of those being charged by “the competition”.

If your team has a project pending, or one in process, where a skilled consultant, at a reasonable hourly rate, can get things back on track, please contact me.  We are ready to work!  A list of our IBM Information Management capabilities is attached here.

Last week in Baltimore The Fillmore Group conducted a deep-dive technical workshop on IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator.  We covered Basic and Advanced hands-on labs with the support of the IBM Poughkeepsie Demo Center.  Saghi Amirsoleymani and Mike Hood, both of IBM, presented on the Tools Ecosystem supporting the Accelerator including:

• Omegamon XE for DB2 Performance Expert
• DB2 Query Monitor
• Optim Query Workload Tuner
• DB2 Analytics Accelerator Loader

The presentation I gave outlining the topics covered in the Basic and Advanced lab exercises is here: IDAA Workshop 2014-04  Additional presentations will be posted soon.

Demo videos of the Tools include:

• DB2 11 Using Statistics Collection Advisor
• IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator for z/OS and the Supporting DB2 and Optim Database Tools

Database Magazine and Articles on Accelerating Analytics Queries

http://ibmdatamag.com/2013/12/accelerating-analytics-queries/

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/dm-1403queryaccel/index.html

IBM has scheduled a second presentation of the 2014 zEnterprise Technology Summit due to the snowstorm that hit in January when the event ran originally.  If you are in the area and have time to attend, please do!  Information on the event is below; register on the IBM site here.  There are several other events scheduled across the US in 2014 – view them on the IBM site here.

IBM zEnterprise Technology Summit Tuesday, May 6, Washington, DC

New technology is stretching IT budgets in many directions, forcing IT to find better ways of meeting business demands in increasingly complex data centers. Read More…

Kim and I conducted a webinar on Thursday, October 3, 2013 that focused on IBM Data Interoperability software products and their specific strengths, weaknesses, and use cases.  We highlighted the application of the InfoSphere family of products to other-vendor databases such as Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase, and Teradata.  Kudos to Kim for putting together a presentation of disparate, but complementary technologies.

The recording of the webinar can be found here.  The presentation materials can be downloaded: Data Interoperability Presentation – FINAL 10.3.13

Data interoperability is the function of moving data where you need it, when you need it. It is the process of copying data, also called replication, or combining data from two unique databases, also called federation.

Over the past ten years IBM has been developing technologies and acquiring companies whose tools support fast, reliable replication and federation.  DB2 Gold Consultant and Champion Frank Fillmore and I will deliver a presentation on IBM’s data interoperability solutions targeted to an audience of current Oracle customers – but open to anyone – this Thursday at 11am EDT.

Frank has worked with customers of all sizes to implement IBM replication and federation solutions.  We will combine his real world experience with the latest product information shared by our colleagues Dylan Murphy and Steve Tessler from IBM.

These tools, IBM’s replication solutions Q Replication and InfoSphere Change Data Capture, and federation solutions Data Explorer and InfoSphere Federation Server, work with Oracle, as well as most vendor databases (so yes, DB2 fans are welcome to join us!)

Register:  HERE

Date: Thursday, October 3, 2013

Time: 11am – noon EDT

If you are in the Baltimore/Washington/NoVA area next week please join the local IBM technical team to learn more about Optim™ Query Capture and Replay (OQCR) for z/OS and LUW.   The presentation is being led by IBM’s Baha Majid, who many local DB2 users know from his volunteer work on the board of the Baltimore/Washington DB2 Users Group, where he helps secure top notch IBM speakers for our meetings.

OQCR is a new product that helps organizations minimize business disruption with the ability to perform realistic workload testing during the quality testing process.

InfoSphere Query Capture Replay enables organizations to:
•    Capture representative production workloads needed for comprehensive real-life test scenarios.
•    Replay the workload to reproduce the original application timing, order of execution, transaction boundaries, isolation levels, and other SQL and application characteristics without the need to setup complex client or middleware environments.
•    Analyze accuracy and performance reports to identify the impact of software, hardware or database changes may have on critical workloads and the environment.

This Proof of Technology describes the key functions of InfoSphere Optim Query Capture Replay and consists of both presentations and hands-on lab exercises for z/OS and LUW platforms.

The PoT will be held at:

IBM McLean TEC
8401 Greensboro Drive
Suite 120
Room EBR
McLean, VA 22102

Agenda
08:30 – 09:00  Breakfast
09:00 – 11:30  Product Presentations and Lab – 1
11:30 – 12:15  Lunch Break
12:15 – 14:00  Lab – 2

To register click here.