Adam Gartenberg’s Blog

Watch the conclusion to "The Pitch Meeting"

Adam Gartenberg — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:22:11 -0400

The conclusion to "The Pitch Meeting" video series is now available on YouTube. See how it all comes together!

And if you haven't seen the first two videos yet, you can find them in the right column of my blog.

Enjoy!

Welcome John DelPizzo, new Sametime Offering Manager

Adam Gartenberg — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:21:23 -0400

I'd like to ask everyone to join me in officially welcoming John DelPizzo to the role of Lotus Sametime Offering Manager. As he's showing already, he far exceeds my creativity in blog post titles ("Hmm. New teeth.... that's weird."), and something tells me he'll have no problem at all fitting in to the Lotus community.

As he's also based here in RTP, I've had the chance to meet with John several times and have gotten to know him a bit, and I feel more than comfortable that I leave Sametime and our UC² strategy in very capable hands. He's already been asking the hard questions ("So exactly why are you doing things this way?") and coming up with good suggestions, and that's been really exciting to see.

After four years under largely the same management, it's always good to get in some fresh blood with a new perspective and creative ideas, and I can't wait to see what John and everyone else on the Sametime team come up with.

John, it's all yours!

Link:
The Sametime Blog: Hmm. New teeth.... that's weird.

Lazy marketers vs. great marketers

Adam Gartenberg — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:04:33 -0400

"All lazy marketers can do is buy ads or spam people.
...
Great marketers create bands of brothers, tribes of people who wish each other well and want to belong. "

Go read Seth Godin's post on the five easy pieces of marketing. Now.

(PS - First up on his list? Data. I think that's pretty important, too.)

Link:
Seth Godin: Five Easy Pieces

This is why I’m not using Yahoo! Mail anymore

Adam Gartenberg — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:07:00 -0400

To be fair, usually my bulk mail is in the high thousands, too... Yahoo must have emptied it for me this morning. The contrast, though, was too stark not to share. I'm still getting 50-100 junk messages a day in my inbox.

Summer

Adam Gartenberg — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:00:00 -0400

Mr. Zuckerman had the best swing in the county. It was a single long piece of heavy rope tied to the beam over the north doorway. At the bottom end of the rope was a fat knot to sit on. It was arranged so that you could swing without being pushed. You climbed a ladder to the hayloft. Then, holding the rope, you stood at the edge and looked down, and were scared and dizzy. Then you straddled the knot, so that it acted as a seat. Then you got up all your nerve, too a deep breath, and jumped. For a second you seemed to be falling to the barn floor far below, but then suddenly the rope would begin to catch you, and you would sail through the barn door going a mile a minute, with the wind whistling in your eyes and ears and hair. Then you would zoom upward into the sky, and look up at the clouds, and the rope would twist and you would twist and turn with the rope. Then you would drop down, down, down out of the sky and come sailing back into the barn almost into the hayloft, then sail out again (not quite so far this time), then in again (not quite so high), then out again, then in again, then out, then in; and then you'd jump off and fall down and let somebody else try it.

Mothers for miles around worried about Zuckerman's swing. They feared some child would fall off. But no child ever did. Children almost always hang onto things tighter than their parents think they will.

-- E. B. White

"Dragons are green, my friend"

Adam Gartenberg — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:12:30 -0400

The Pitch Meeting - Part 2 is now posted. See how the story continues...

(And in case you missed part 1, see here.)

Subscribed: Mix and Mash blog

Adam Gartenberg — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:32:11 -0400

I'm not sure how I missed this so far, but I just learned about the very cleverly named "Mix and Mash" blog about - what else - the mashup market and the IBM Mashup Center.

Head on over to check out some good posts already about what's going on in this space.

And make sure you check out their ItsMashtastic YouTube channel (again - I'm jealous of their naming prowess). You'll find plenty of demos, such as the one below that shows how easy it is to mashup, say a list of addresses with a map.

I'm looking forward to reading more from Mark and Nicole going forward!

Links:

My Resume/CV as a tag cloud

Adam Gartenberg — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:55:17 -0400

I came across an internal blog post by Ralph Demuth showing his resume/CV as a tag cloud created in wordle.net.

This, of course, made me curious to see what my resume would look like as a tag cloud. A quick Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V later, and voilà:

(Click image to enlarge)

Even better, thanks to the comment thread on that internal post, I discovered that Wordle is a project put together by Jonathan Feinberg, an IBM Researcher. Very cool!

Update - 6/19
One of the things I found interesting about the results is how the words I would have expected to be called out the most weren't necessarily highlighted. Do I need to rethink my resume a bit? (Not that I'm looking for a job right now, but it's certainly something I'm going to consider the next time updates are in order.)

Update #2 - 6/19
It looks like the meme is spreading:
Ian White: I'm a tag cloud
Dvir Reznik: My CV as a tag cloud
Alan Lepofsky: Since so many others seem to be doing it, here is my Wordle
Roo Reynolds: My CV, as a Wordle tag cloud (with interesting juxtaposition against his Del.icio.us tag cloud)
Keith Strickland: Resume Wordle
The TED Blog: Wordle, an addictive new web toy (although there doesn't seem to be any evidence it's directly related to this meme.)

Welcome two new IBM Data Management blogs

Adam Gartenberg — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:08:48 -0400

I wanted to welcome two new IBM Data Management blogs to the blogosphere.

Terry Frangos is a manager of DB2 technical support for Linux, Unix and Windows, and will be sharing information from the DB2 LUW technical support team. His first few posts are already up, and look like they have some helpful information on FAQs and IBM's support lifecycle model.

The Inside the Data Studio blog is a team blog by the Data Studio team, and will offer advice, tips, and lessons learned in building the solutions and interacting with customers. You can see an introductory post by Curt Cotner, VP and CTO of the newly formed Data Studio group, as well as details around shell sharing and how Data Studio can help you if you're a DB2 for z/OS DBA.

Please head on over and take a look, and join me in welcoming them to the blogosphere!

Links:

Social Media in Plain English

Adam Gartenberg — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:26:37 -0400

Apparently it's video week here on the Adam Gartenberg Blog.

I just came across CommonCraft's "Social Media in Plain English," and wanted to pass it along... for those of you who might be wondering what all the hoopla is about and don't have a teenager to explain it to you :)

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

(Via the Social Media Marketing blog)

Watch the new DB2 "Viral Video" (Part 1)

Adam Gartenberg — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:33:11 -0400

One of the key purposes of the team I'm on is to build awareness for IBM's Data Management solutions.

And what better way to do that than a "viral video" about... what else... creating a "viral video."

After you watch the video, make sure you click through to ibm.com/db2/ThePitch to learn more about pureXML and our community sites, or if it really got your creative juices flowing, head over to the IDUG Video Contest and show us your take on DB2!

And stay tuned over the next few weeks for parts 2 and 3 of the story - this is only the beginning!

IOD EMEA Video Highlights

Adam Gartenberg — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:27:43 -0400

Those of you who weren't able to join us at the IOD EMEA conference can catch a glimpse of some of the highlights in this video:

"The last two to three decades has been about the application agenda. The next two to three decades is going to be about the information agenda. And working with IBM and IBM partners, you are in the best hands."
-- Dr. Ambuj Goyal

The opening video for the conference has also been posted online:

Friday fun: DB2 Guru Game

Adam Gartenberg — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:36:16 -0400

Thanks to my DB2 Tweet Scan feed, I came across the DB2 Guru Game that CA has put out. Try it out! (And no, I'm not going to tell you my score.)

In good company

Adam Gartenberg — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:55:40 -0400

I'm still catching up on some of my reading. Here are some interesting statistics that I missed the other week, as reported by the DB2 News and Tips blog:

As expected, Arvind Krishna's Monday morning keynote provided a detailed state of the union of IBM's holy trinity (DB2, Informix, and IMS). Here are some of the happy numbers I remember:

DB2 on System z powers 9 of the world's top 10 insurance companies, 23 of the top 25 retailers in the US, and every single one of the top 59 banks in the world.

Just one IMS customer (presumably one of the bigger ones) handles as much as three trillion dollars in transactions in a single day.

IMS databases handle transactions for 95% of Fortune 1000 companies

The sum total of all live data managed right now in IMS is estimated to be over 15 exabytes, or 15 billion gigabytes, served up on over 3 million MIPS of mainframe hardware.

Celebrating DB2’s 25th Anniversary

Adam Gartenberg — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:59:41 -0400

I didn't want to let the week go by without adding my own congratulations to DB2 on its 25th anniversary. (Joining the chorus of others, like Willie Favero, Database Magazine, and the Peoplesoft/Oracle News blog.)

An article in Information Week highlights what made the introduction of the relational database so important...

Predecessor systems like IBM's IMS and VSAM on the mainframe could store megabytes of data, but it had to be entered and retrieved in the same structured way every time. Changing the structure or sequence of data meant taking the database offline, with programmers laboring over it for hours to make sure the changes didn't torpedo the handful of systems that depended on the storage mechanism. With relational database, dozens or hundreds of applications can be added to the same system, each getting the data it needs in the desired format.

...As well as what the skeptics were saying at the time:

At first, relational database was a highly mocked product, halting in its performance compared to the programmed-path systems. Skeptics like John Cullinane, founder of Cullinet Software, once took this reporter aside to instruct him that relational database would never amount to anything compared to his firm's IDMS product. Last year, relational database represented an $18.6 billion a year market, according to IDC. Ecommerce would be impossible without it.

And in an interview with IT Pro, IBM's Chris Livesey predicts what we'll all be using when 2033 rolls around:

"All these organisations are united together to animate data to get insight into how businesses are responding. DB2 is the bedrock and that makes it as relevant today as it was in 1983. I'm sure we'll be celebrating it in another 25 years from now".

And in case you don't have your own copy, IBM has posted the original press release announcing DB2.

Links:

Original DB2 Launch Press Release (1982)
IBM.com: IBM DB2 Turns 25!
InformationWeek: IBM DB2's 25th Anniversary: Birth Of An Accidental Empire
IT Pro: IBM's DB2 database reaches 25th birthday milestone
ITWorldCanada: IBM’s Toronto lab looks back on 25 years of DB2
Willie Favero - a history of DB2. (Scroll to the bottom for links to all of his history-related posts so far).

Do you ChannelDB2?

Adam Gartenberg — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:36:39 -0400

OK, so "Do you ChannelDB2" probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's catchy, isn't it? I'm feeling a theme song coming on. (Where's Frank Sinatra when you need him?)

But I'm getting off topic...

I mostly wanted to point out that ChannelDB2, the community site for videos, blogs, podcasts, and discussions around DB2, was being featured on the DB2 home page on ibm.com right now.

So back to my question: Have you visited ChannelDB2 yet?

IBM Informix Dynamic Server and the Apple Developers Conference [Updated]

Adam Gartenberg — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:33:32 -0400

***Update***
I was just informed that participants that joined Apple onstage at the WWDC are not actually allowed to talk about being on stage at WWDC. (Apparently the first rule of WWDC is that you don't talk about WWDC. The second rule of WWDC is that...)

So, I can neither confirm nor deny what role Informix may or may not have played at the Apple Developer's Conference. Feel free to write me should you want more details about this theoretical involvement/non-involvement.

What I can still confirm is that IBM Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) 11.5, which was released in early May, is now available on the Mac, extending the pre-existing support for Linux, Unix and Windows.

Please see the links below for more information about IDS.

Additional details:

Customer successes with DB2 pureXML

Adam Gartenberg — Mon, 9 Jun 2008 10:46:29 -0400

This may be old news for some of you, but I was just sent a link to this wiki page listing a dozen customer success stories of companies choosing IBM DB2 with pureXML^TM, along with other pureXML news.

Customer Success with DB2 pureXML

finEye - finEye chooses IBM DB2 9 with pureXML for financial analytic decision system.
EnterpriseFlow - EnterpriseFlow chooses IBM DB2 9 with pureXML for BPM/ERP application suite.
New York State Tax Authority - New York State tax agency uses pureXML to process millions of tax filings
Banque Raiffeisen -Banque Raiffeisen selects Temenos and DB2 9 pureXML for banking application
BeaconIT - BeaconIT migrated from Tamino XML Server to DB2 pureXML
StoreBrand - StoreBrand improves agility by integrating business processes with IBM solution
Storebrand Video profile
Catholic Medical Center - Catholic Medical Center chooses IBM DB2 9 with pureXML over legacy DBMS to support its integrated healthcare platform.
Douglas Holding AG - DOUGLAS HOLDING AG accelerates sales reporting by storing pureXML data eight times faster in its IBM DB2 9 data server.
Nippon Chemi-Con - Nippon Chemi-Con Corporation chooses IBM DB2 9 with pureXML™ for Manufacturing and Inventory Management
Visualization with xfy Dramatically Improves Nippon Chemi-Con's Operational Efficiency
China Huadian - China Huadian Corporation chooses IBM DB2 9 with pureXML to integrate and analyze corporate property information.
Beijing XiCheng District Health Bureau - Beijing XiCheng District Health Bureau chooses IBM DB2 9 with pureXML to provide EMR healthcare information exchange.
Software Research Associates Tohoku - Software Research Associates Tohoku chooses IBM DB2 9 with pureXML for Univision+EV system.

> More

"What’s true in life is also true in marketing..."

Adam Gartenberg — Mon, 9 Jun 2008 09:19:07 -0400

As always, sound advice from the Gaping Void blog:

What's true in life is also true in marketing: If you want to be boring, talk about yourself. If you want to be interesting, talk about other people.

> More

IOD EMEA - My takeaways from the Irish Life & Permanent session

Adam Gartenberg — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 20:51:04 +0200

One of the sessions I attended on Thursday at IOD EMEA was delivered by Irish Life & Permanent, and described how they've gone about bringing together multiple backend systems post-merger to create a single customer view. I found the session and the insights shared fascinating, and wanted to pass on my notes. (Unfortunately, by this time of the day my laptop battery was drained and so I couldn't take notes live.) And I just double-checked and we do have a case study on them available online, too.

As a result of the merger, Irish Life & Permanent found themselves with multiple client databases, which not only complicated things on the back end, but it meant that customers found themselves needing to sign in multiple times with multiple pins just to get their account information (even though they were now dealing with "one" company). It also meant that if they wanted to update their address or other personal information, they'd have to manually do it for each account. Needless to say, this was not the kind of customer experience they wanted to deliver.

The session began with overall suggestions for managing a project such as this, including:

Analyze the data
Create a high level vision
Develop a communications plan
Prepare a business case (although he noted that they never actually got asked for it - their management saw this as critical enough that they just knew it had to be done)
Take an incremental phased approach (and he highlighted the incremental part - you don't just want a phased approach, you want to be sure that as you proceed you're building off the previous phases)

They sought advice from analysts before they got started

They chose a MDM solution from IBM, composed of IBM WebSphere Customer Center and IBM Information Server .

The IBM installed base was very important in their decision, especially other large financial institutions that are using it.

Coming back to the business case again, the CEO of the company really viewed their customer data as a strategic asset. As he put it, to be a retailer, you have to understand your customers.

The goal of this first phase of the project was to create a hub for key client data, with the goal being to standardize a subset of of the essential, shared client data such as name, address, contact information, birth date. This hub would then be used to update data across all of the backend data repositories and ensure they all were in synch going forward (so if, for example, a client submitted an address change for one product, it would automatically be updated in all the databases).

IBM Information Server was used to standardize names and addresses across all of the data repositories and to remove duplicates. (They've deleted around 250,000 duplicate records already.)

Now that "the plumbing" is done, they can look at additional benefits - such as allowing a customer to come to the website and see all of their accounts at once instead of having to enter 7 different. PIN numbers to see all of their policies or accounts.

They plan to put MDM hub into the Warehouse for business intelligence

As I said at the top, I found it really fascinating to hear described not only how much value they saw in this initiative, but how quickly they got it done (I want to say it was around a year - or maybe 18 months? - start to finish.) Thank you for sharing your story!

More information: Case study on Irish Life & Permanent