I submitted this blog post to the IOD blog (IOD blog) as I was leaving the conference:

At this year’s Information On Demand conference I had the pleasure to catch up with three IBMers who have endorsed, supported and yes, tolerated The Fillmore Group in various ways for many years. Each of these three wonderful IBMers announced their participation in the IBM “Road to Retirement” program and shared some of their post-IBM plans. I wish them all the very best, while at the same time am saddened to see such talented and dedicated experts leave IBM.

Sandy Ovard has been working as Business Partner liaison to Lab Services and has helped us navigate the increasingly complex Lab Services partner engagement process. As we depend on Lab Services for a portion of our services business, Sandy has had the frequently unpleasant job of soliciting Business Partner feedback and addressing issues. Her patience and consistent willingness to pitch in will be missed.

Holly Hayes is one of the SVL development superstars who has worked with a number of technologies. Holly is one of the few “surf and turf” people who fully understand the most technical of technical subjects and has the communication skills to explain them to those non-techies, like me, who need analogies and pictures to understand. I am have been surprised – and amazed – on more than one occasion when I hear about a customer that struggled with a new product implementation and hear, “and then I got Holly involved,” and invariably, things smooth out.

Finally, David Tolleson. David has been the replication and federation Product Manager and a tireless promoter of these solutions. David has blogged, responded to endless emails, and enthusiastically supported a niche technology that enables some of the world’s largest IT shops to meet those 24X7 uptime SLA’s. He has worked with a team that is not only technically capable, but fun to work with.

Good luck to you all!