Attendance aid and content for Tech Forum
July 13, 2006
While HP 3000 users wait on details for their 3000-specific conference in Houston, Encompass has added help and incentives for getting your trip approved to September's HP Technology Forum. The Forum costs a good deal more than the GHRUG event — but if you're moving from MPE/iX to HP-UX, Windows or even Linux, your company needs to have training in the budget.
Yesterday Encompass put up its 2006 Session Scheduler, a way to keep your training trip efficient. A detailed schedule might convince your upper management to green-light your training, but the Tech Forum Web site requires a registration before you can start scheduling online. A good public-access catalog, however, can help you build a list of sessions to show your IT director, CFO, president or controller.
If you're not lucky enough to be one of those things for your company, then Encompass has offered a novel tool — new to the 3000 community, anyway. There's a draft letter on the user group's Web site which helps you build a case, and estimate expenses, for the Tech Forum trip. (We note that the total cost might need such a letter, unless you have an well-established training budget.)
There's also a bonus that's expiring in two days: the $100 HP Bucks for registering by midnight Saturday, July 15. As for 3000-specific content, that public catalog lists six sessions. Every one of them covers an aspect of migration, but some are bound to have new information. We are, after all, close to five years into the 3000 Transition Era.
Talks from Speedware's Chris Koppe, MB Foster president Birket Foster, HP's Kevin Cooper, Jim Hawkins and a panel led by HP's Alvina Nishimoto cover migration tool strategy; database migration; estimating performance of migrated applications; peripheral/high availability migration, and migration success stories, respectively.
There's also a tag-team session on the four-plus years of migration experience, delivered by HP and its Platinum Migration Partners, MB Foster and Speedware.
Six sessions over three days may not seem like a lot, but there's ample HP-UX and Windows sessions, too. More than 400 of them, by Encompass accounting. HP CEO Mark Hurd is delivering a keynote, not exactly a commonplace event for the vendor's new leader.
Finally, for the company still on the bubble, deciding about migration, OpenMPE has scheduled an update on its plans and goals for post-HP use of the 3000. Four board members, including Foster and Speedware's Jennifer Fisher, will be at the Campground meeting.
If you've been to an Interex conference in the past, this event might seem like a different approach. HP critique won't be impassioned like the "hockey fights" of HP Worlds past, to use HP VP David Parson's term for the classic debates. Things move on, and GHRUG is in the wings with its November event, probably costing 70 percent less, if we have to guess. Maintaining your commitment to HP might be as good a reason as any to give the Forum a try.