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| Twitter photo feed from IDUG NA 2019 |
IDUG NA 2019 Highlights
Similar to most IDUG conferences, this one was hard work. Technical sessions began on 8 am every morning and, making use of the expo center and networking events, you were busy until falling into the hotel bed.My Monday morning pretty much was related to the journey to AI and the role of Db2. The opening keynote focused on the importance of data as foundation for everything. Data nerd has involved into something positive because almost everyone now acknowledges that without good data there are no good decisions and competitive disadvantages. In that sense Db2 is the backbone of data management, one of the foundations for cognitive computing in the enterprise. Moreover, the newly announced Db2 11.5 has more AI and ML (machine learning) built in and tools like IBM Db2 Augmented Data Explorer help to discover insights. Licensing is going to change for Db2 11.5 and the code (and teams) for Db2 and Db2 Warehouse etc. are going to converge. There will also be a common IBM Hybrid Data Management offering which makes it simpler to use the different products and deployment flavors.
Zowe was the common theme on the mainframe with Db2 for z/OS. It makes the Z environment easily accessible and consumable (and sexy to a new generation of IT specialists). It provides APIs into common services and can be integrated and used via both CLI and UI.
The conference had many of the familiar sessions (performance, high availability, migration, backup / restore / recovery / logging, monitoring) catering to the DBA crowd. However, DevOps, continuous delivery (CI / CD) and security to address regulations and new threads were on the agenda for all platforms, too.
A special session and a regular highlight is the mini panel. They offer the opportunity to directly ask both IBMers and other experts and allow the open exchange on anything related to the Db2 community.
In addition to the technical sessions a big value of IDUG conferences is the networking. I enjoyed catching up in person on some email-based discussions, meeting some fans and co-workers for the first time and discussing all kinds of technical and non-technical topics over a coffee or beer.
If you want to get an impression on what was going on, read over these Tweets from last week. As a conference attendee, revisit the session material which is downloadable from the IDUG event website.
Coming up: IDUG EMEA 2019 in Rotterdam
Next up for me is the IDUG EMEA conference in October. Early bird registration is open. There are even more IDUG events this year with a Data Tech Summit in San Jose (Silicon Valley) and another Data Tech Summit at the IBM Toronto Lab.If you have feedback, suggestions, or questions about this post, please reach out to me on Twitter (@data_henrik) or LinkedIn.