The annual North American IDUG Conference was held in Anaheim, California a couple of weeks ago where the latest and greatest information about DB2, and a lot of material on DB2 10, was unveiled. The technical experiences discussed at IDUG with DB2 for z/OS and LUW from many user companies are great because the knowledge is from users and consultants who have implemented systems and applications and have that extra in-depth knowledge of the multiple versions of DB2, including DB2 10 from the beta program. The presentations always provide a little extra tidbit that helps you avoid problems because speakers discuss the details of their scars from the front lines.
Hearing all the DB2 10 beta users’ presentations was really great. Most of the DB2 10 beta customers gave their impressions and testing results of DB2 10. They demonstrated why DB2 10 will be rolling into production environments soon. Some companies are even planning on consolidating DB2 systems or data sharing members because of the improved memory capabilities and since a single DB2 10 system can now handle almost 10 times more users as previous versions.
Several companies are evaluating DB2 10 against SAP and PeopleSoft applications. The testing of these applications has gone well and the companies are waiting for SAP and Oracle to get back to them with their certification of DB2 10. It seems the beta customers are testing more extensively and faster than these software companies. It really doesn’t surprise me that Oracle would be late to certifying their application since Oracle continues to lose customers due to the improvements on the mainframe and other versions of DB2.
Also the talk at the IDUG conference was that many Oracle shops that also have DB2 LUW are converting a large number of their Oracle instances to DB2 because of the crazy Oracle priced contracts. Saving money with DB2 LUW over Oracle continues as companies look at the performance and reliability of DB2. Expect that trend to continue as DB2 10 rolls out and companies are even consolidating their Oracle instances into their DB2 for z/OS environments.
I would like to send a big “Thank You” out to the IDUG organization. I have been fortunate to write the IDUG DB2 Magazine column for the last eight years and I was informed that IDUG marketing is going to be taking it over. It has been my privilege to provide the technical articles on DB2 z/OS and LUW over the years and it will give me more time in my busy consulting and Syspedia software business.
I regret that I haven’t mentioned all the LUW enhancements talked about at IDUG. It has been a crazy week putting the finishing performance touches on a new 22 billion row data warehouse. It’s nice being able to take processing from 37 hours to minutes for some of the report processes.
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