Looking at the IBM Information on Demand (IOD) conference grid for DB2 training this week, I was struck by all the great topics and subjects presented at the conference. The new Cognos, SPSS topics and all the standard DB2 LUW and DB2 z/OS topics are always a great way to get DB2 education, learn and understand the latest trends in the industry.
I was especially impressed with the large number of IT cost saving and DB2 performance ideas stories included in the agenda. Increasingly IT is becoming the new battlefield for saving the company money and innovation. The topic that seems to be getting a lot of talk time this year is how to drive down costs of your IT operations and overall IT budget. These IT costs are always examined, especially during tough times, and this recession period is no different.
There are several interesting cost savings presentation stories. Many relate to the massive amounts of UNIX servers consolidated onto Linux on the System Z platform. These distributed server consolidations to Linux for System Z save tremendous amounts of money – millions of dollars for only a small number of servers – in software licenses, maintenance costs, personnel and even energy costs. Energy costs alone can save hundreds of thousands of dollars for a typical distribute server consolidated to Linux for System Z. I have been hearing about these server consolidations for a while, but it seems to be more on the radar screen these days and picking up speed.
Other presentations that are hitting both IT cost savings and DB2 performance these days are the ones in the Cognos and SPSS areas. The move to put operational business intelligence applications into the hands of front line operations personnel is not only a way to get business savings, but also a discussion of performance of database systems. Since business intelligence in the hands of operational people is the trend for the next 5-10 years, we all better get used to the performance challenges of larger data warehouse databases and their performance impact within the performance of OLTP type requirements.
Other trends that I see or hear in the market:
- We aren’t buying any more servers; we don’t have the space. This correlates with what Gartner is saying about hardware sales being down and projected to stay down for 2010.
- Windows 7 won’t be rolled out until 2011 at least. It’s so slow you need a new PC for it to run and management doesn’t have the budget or patience to fix Microsoft issues these days.
What things are you hearing? Hope to see you at the DB2 training conference. Lets discuss what you are hearing about IT, how to save your IT budget money and, as always, the latest system database, and application and DB2 performance topics.
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Dave Beulke is an internationally recognized DB2 consultant, DB2 trainer and education instructor. Dave helps his clients improve their strategic direction, dramatically improve DB2 performance and reduce their CPU demand saving millions in their systems, databases and application areas within their mainframe, UNIX and Windows environments.
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