Agility & collaboration for the win at InterConnect 2017

20 March, 2017
Stephanie Freyer
IBM

The day opened as all days in Las Vegas should – with a bright blue sky and the hot sun beating down on the strip. The temperature change was just a primer for what greeted us next – the intensity and energy of IBM InterConnect 2017. Boasting the best of training, certification and expert talks, 2,000+ sessions, 200+ labs and countless learning opportunities, you’d better be ready for more than the air conditioning to blow you away when you walk into Mandalay Bay. A little day one recap will help get you ready!

Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas

First up on Sunday was the Business Partner Summit, which kicked off with a host of fantastic keynote speakers. Notably, we heard from Bill Karpovich of IBM Bluemix, who led off with a call to arms on our imperative to bring together cloud and cognitive platforms to meet the current demands of clients – the attainment of meaningful insights from data to inform better decisions.

We also had the privilege of hearing insightful predictions on the future of cloud technology from VP & Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, Liz Herbert. Herbert cautioned against slowness to change, and advised that the key to the speed and agility demanded in today’s market lies with cloud. Below are Herbert’s seven critical factors for cloud deployment:

  1. Speed: agile deployments with value in weeks or months
  2. Process knowledge: prescribed, best-in-class approaches
  3. Change management: new approaches for business and IT
  4. Orchestration: brokering, integration, vendor management
  5. Continuous enhancement: upgrade assimilation and agile development
  6. Security reality check: risk mitigation instead of fear mongering
  7. New business models: cloud as an enabler of digital business

Liz Herbert of Forrester

The Open Technology Summit also took place on Sunday, and showcased world-class industry experts from IBM, OpenStack, Cloud Foundry, The Linux Foundation and more. The speakers discussed the importance of the open source community as the future of development, and drove home the power of collaboration to innovate quickly. Inspiration came from speakers such as Abby Kearns of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, who encouraged those in the room to “change our industry, our countries, and the world,” and Jonathan Bryce of OpenStack also instructed everyone to “collaborate or die”.

Collaborate or Die

The evening closed with a great networking opportunity at Libertine Social for all of the IBM Social Media VIPs attending the event. We talked about highlights from the day and what we were excited for in the week to come, including everything from IBM Chairwoman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty’s keynote (you can watch it live on Tuesday at 9am PST) to the musical performance from Zac Brown Band and Andy Grammer!

Social VIPs at InterConnect

If you can’t make it to IBM InterConnect this year, you can still be a part of the action – follow IBM on Snapchat to be a part of the IBM Systems takeover!

You can also check out the In the Making blog for daily recaps during the event and reflections in the weeks to follow.

The post Agility & collaboration for the win at InterConnect 2017 appeared first on IBM Systems Blog: In the Making.