With 2018 coming to a close I am focused on plans for 2019. Our current plans are being driven by changes in IBM’s services delivery model and product enhancements to be available in 2019. Change can be good!
In 2018 IBM’s Lab Services organization opted to extend their use of Business Partners to support customer engagements. Lab Services has long maintained relationships with skilled partners to augment their staff consultants; in 2018 this utilization was increased. The Fillmore Group staffed several Lab Services engagements and supplied half a dozen consultants to support a variety of engagements including implementations, migrations, healthchecks, and staff augmentation, supporting replication solutions InfoSphere Change Data Capture, pureScale, Kafka, and Q Replication, as well as Db2 and Hadoop.
In staffing these engagements we became aware of several interesting customer situations and opportunities we hope will deliver better results to our customers in 2019. Through a chance conversation with a Federal agency looking to identify the best replication tools for their next generation applications, we learned about some enhancements to the replication portfolio solutions expected to be delivered in 2019.
To support our IBM colleagues in spreading the word about the upcoming enhancements, and to (no surprise!) encourage customers to contact us if they are in need of support, the 2019 schedule of events below was drafted.
Some of these “events” consist primarily of outreach to customers who may be interested. If these apply to you, feel free to contact me for more information.
Here’s to a busy 2019!
1. CDC Healthcheck Services. Delivery through Lab Services. a. Audience: current CDC customers considering new replication environments and/or looking to better support current replication. b. Tasks/activities: a review of current replication environments, staff enablement, monitoring review, performance tuning and/or planning new replication environments. c. Deliverables: Healthcheck report, enablement recommendations, plan for new replication sources and targets.
2. IBM Replication Roadmap Webinar. a. Audience: current and prospective replication customers. b. Content: a review of current and new replication offerings. c. Deliverables: recommendations/actions needed to initiate CDC purchases.
3. Kafka Webinar. a. Audience: current and prospective customers looking to replication to Kafka. b. Content: a review of Kafka, use cases, and where Kafka is best deployed. c. Deliverables: recommendations/actions to initiate Kafka deployment.
4. Replication Whitepaper. a. Audience: current and prospective customers. b. Content: TBD – replication competitive options, pricing, and/or Db2 for z data focus. c. Deliverable: whitepaper explaining IBM replication options compared with competitor solutions.
5. Kafka Quickstart Services. Delivery through Lab Services. a. Audience: customers implementing replication to Kafka. b. Tasks/activities: Kafka installation, replication set-up, and staff enablement. c. Deliverables: data replicating to Kafka.
6. Kafka Training – Extending KM020G ICDC Class a. Audience: new Kafka customers. b. Tasks/activities: instructor-led modules to demonstrate and explain Kafka implementation and administration. c. Deliverables: 2-days of formal classroom instruction with hands-on exercises.
7. IAS to IAS Replication Quickstart Services. Delivery through Lab Services a. Audience: customers implementing IAS to IAS replication. b. Tasks/activities: Software installation, replication set-up, and staff enablement. c. Deliverables: IAS replication, monitoring in place.
8. Competitive Replication Webinar. a. Audience: Oracle GG and Attunity customers. b. Content: a review of the advantages of IBM replication solutions. c. Deliverables/action items: action plan to PoC IBM replication offerings.
