Richard Bishop

Vivit Board President

In December, Vivit joined over 13,000 HPE customers and partners at the ExCeL in London where the new Hewlett Packard Enterprise was hosting its Discover event. This first "post HP-split” conference allowed the new HPE to "set out its stall” and describe how the restructure had left it in a position to respond more quickly to customer demands. As Meg Whitman said, "Success in the world favours companies that can invent and re-invent at warp speed”.

HPE Discover
The conference is an opportunity for HPE to meet customers and partners and share their ideas for the future. For me, it’s a great place to meet fellow users of HPE software and pick up "best practice tips” as well as getting the latest information from the product management and R&D teams.

As well as the keynote and general sessions, HPE and Vivit host technical breakout sessions and roundtables at the conference and as a result, the conference really has "something for everyone”. My only complaint is that there never seems to be enough time to see all the people that I’d like to and I often leave the conference wanting more!

If you missed the conference, the links below will take you to some of the highlights and general session presentations:
HPE Discover 2015 London - Highlights
HPE Discover 2015 London - General Sessions

Key themes
The split was a major theme (HPE was only one month old at the time of the conference). HPE was keen to share their experiences of the reorganisation and now consider themselves to be experts in the business of large scale transformations. HPE is keen to build on the legacy of Hewlett Packard to deliver more, faster with their new, leaner organisation.

As well as HP’s separation into multiple businesses there were four key business themes, running through the conference.

• Transformation (to a hybrid infrastructure)
• Protection (of the digital enterprise)
• Enablement (of workplace productivity)
• Empowerment (of a data-driven organisation)

Each of these themes boiled down to using IT to do more for business, at a higher speed and a higher quality than before. Whilst maximising the value of company data and ensuring the security of digital assets.

Vivit news
Over recent years, Vivit’s membership has been growing rapidly and each conference is an opportunity for the Vivit board to give HPE and our members an update on our growth and plans for the future. I’m delighted to announce that our membership has doubled in the last 2.5 years and we now represent over 33,000 members from more than 31 countries.

Get the most from your Vivit membership
As our membership grows, it can be hard to keep track of our members’ areas of interest. We know that we have an almost equal split of members who use HPE QA/applications products and HPE operations management products and a similar split of managers and practitioners. We’re keen to ensure that each of you receive relevant, timely information from Vivit. You can help us to ensure that you receive the right information from Vivit by updating your profile on the Vivit website. If you let us know the products that you use we’ll do our best to ensure that you receive only the most relevant information. Update your profile now!

Vivit has 80 Local User Groups (LUGs) in 31 countries and 19 Special Interest Groups (SIGs). Each LUG and SIG has its own focus and personality. Members of LUGs meet face to face to share best practices, tips, and tricks. Members of SIGs meet online and can participate in blogs and webinars.

To join a group relevant to you, log into the Vivit website - http://www.vivit-worldwide.org Find the LUG and SIGs that are most relevant to you and select the "Join group” icon which will appear at the top of the group page. If you can’t find a LUG or SIG that’s relevant to you get in touch and we’ll help if we can.

We’re looking forward to the next Discover conference in Las Vegas in June 2016 and beyond that, to the next EMEA conference which will be at the ExCeL in London in December 2016.