by Iris Boers
Vivit EMEA Liaison
Live streaming is on the rise – a recap of the first Vivit Virtual Customer Days in December
Big Data, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, Predictive Maintenance - Digital technologies are changing every industry, and create new value models and reshape the way we communicate, live and work. There’s no doubt that automation, online platforms, and other digital-related trends are transforming every industry today. The boundaries between the digital and physical worlds continue to blur. This has a direct impact on the way we conduct business with one another, as a significant amount of people and businesses are moving online, thanks to a whole new world of possibilities for interaction opened by the internet. Virtual conferences, as they’re called, are becoming a desirable alternative to real-world events, not least, because live streaming has a “can’t miss” factor that taps into people’s FOMO (fear of missing out). From TED talks to full-blown week-long events, professionals are moving online to share insights, ideas, and products. Virtual events are to conferences what Netflix is to television: audience autonomy. By giving ‘attendees’ flexibility, they improve overall engagement. Those on the other side of the world simply boot up their computer. Those who can’t watch a three o’clock talk can just bookmark the event and catch up later.
Nevertheless, there are still skeptics who claim that virtual events won’t be ample opportunities for interacting, meeting and networking with new people from the industry and their peers. But with the review of the first Vivit Virtual Customer days (VCD), these doubters would be very surprised by the many very stimulating discussions that the participants had with the speakers and other participants, through various social channels such as Slack, sli.do, etc. The best thing is – those who missed the live events now have the chance to watch the great roundtable discussions and all presentations from various Micro Focus Product Managers, as well as those of the partners and customers right now.
The Virtual Customer Days in a nutshell, and what you may have missed
VCD in short - were full conference days, with 24 live sessions, or to put it another way, 20 hours of live presentations, around the latest product developments and features, as well as roadmap outlooks around the Application Delivery Management (ADM) and IT Operations Management (ITOM) solutions from Micro Focus. The sessions were presented by various global product managers, included exciting Live Roundtable discussions and live Q&A, with questions that came directly from the audience via social channels, as well as value-added presentations from partners like Accenture, Derdack, DXC Technology, Melillo Consulting, Merito, and Whitlock.
An unwritten law for a conference is, no matter if virtual or face-to-face, on-demand or live, it lives and dies with the quality of the presenters and therefore, we would like to thank all the speakers for their great presentations, and Joe Colantonio from TestGuild, for his inspiring and extraordinary moderation. If you look at the numerous social media posts, or at Jonathan Wright's two blog posts, “The-Season-of-Giving--ADM-Virtual-Customer-Days-VCD“ and IT Operations Management Virtual Customer Days Overview Blog, you can guess that not only did the participants enjoyed the sessions a lot, but the speakers had a lot of fun too.
Virtual Customer Days – ADM
The ADM Virtual Customer Days, the first 2-day virtual conference, focused on key trends from Agile to DevOps and everything in between from Continuous Integration, Testing, and Delivery. As business is under enormous pressure to get new capabilities out faster, it becomes increasingly difficult to #plan, #build, #test, and #deliver products at the pace the business demands. As traditional businesses scramble to respond to the demands of digitally empowered customers, they also need to keep their business running smoothly. So, there was one question that was like a common theme throughout the two-day conference: How can an IT organization continue to run, while innovating faster with lower risk?
During the various sessions from Archie Roboostoff, Head of Product Management, Functional & Performance Testing Portfolio at Micro Focus, or Tal Levi Joseph, VP Products, PLM at Micro Focus, Renato Quedas, Director of Product Management, Performance Engineering at Micro Focus, to name just a few of the many other spokespersons, attendees gained insight into #application delivery trends, how to align valuestreams with strategy, and learned about the integrated roadmap across the MicroFocus Lifecycle. The second conference day was mainly marked by presentations and discussions by partners, customers, and experts such as Graham England, Lead Quality Analyst for Automation at Galileo International/Travelport, who explained during his session the tools and components that make up their automation framework, and how they have used it to confidently step into the SAFe CI/CD world. Another highlight was the session of Paul Grossmann, an Independent Consultant, who introduced to the audience to the “Secrets of Test Automation: Identify Objects on the Fly with the Magic Object Model”. If you were unable to attend, not to worry, you can view the on-demand recordings on the Vivit website. Recordings are only viewable by Vivit members, so spread the word to your fellow colleagues to Join Vivit, so that they too can have access to this informative Application Delivery Management and IT Operations Management product information from the EXPERTS!
Virtual Customer Days – ITOM
On the 10th and 11th of December, everything at the ITOM Virtual Customer Days turned around the question, how new approaches to IT operations management can help IT organization to become a trusted advisor to the business—and raise the profile of I&O beyond day-to-day service management. As customers today are looking for the next GenOps for compliance, meeting business objectives and challenges on reduced budgets, and fully automated communication and operations, IT operations are expected to find incremental efficiencies that will allow them to do everything—in the cloud or on-premise. And last but not least, this must be achieved in many cases with reduced staff and less budget, while having zero impact on service quality and no compromise to IT compliance. IT Operations is hard work.
As with the ADM VCD, the first day of the conference was characterized by Micro Focus keynote presentations, current roadmaps, and an outlook on trends in the areas of Service Management, Robotic Process Automation, and network operations management. Within the 6 live sessions, presented by Micro Focus Executives such as Chane Cullens, Director of Strategy IT Operations Management, attendees learned how a connect-services approach can better address hybrid complexity while transforming IT into a service-driven organization. Micro Focus can help enterprises addressing the challenges and complexities of hybrid IT by reducing the friction of IT service consumption, bringing clarity to problems and resolutions, meeting demand at the speed of DevOps, and reasserting the governance role of IT. The “Ask ITOM Anything Roundtable” discussion with all the Micro Focus keynotes speakers at the end of the first day of the conference, where the many questions from the audience that had reached us live throughout the day via the various communication channels were answered, was a crowning finale. The second day started with an inspiring discussion guided by Doreen Jacobi, President & CEO at Derdack and Jeff Jamieson, President at Whitlock Infrastructure Solutions, who shared their views on current industry trends, and their future outlook at IT Operations. One key statement was that digital transformations are creating big changes and demands on IT Operations. On the one hand, the digital transformation accelerates and creates new customer experiences, and this leads to higher revenue, but on the other hand, a traditional ITSM solution cannot keep up with requirements and expectations. Businesses want to avoid complex and expensive service management solutions, as you can’t hit the reset button every time the market changes. Answers and tips and tricks to what is needed to tackle these challenges were given by the different presenters. Another highlight session in the afternoon was the presentation of the Vivit Worldwide Director and President, Jonathon Wright, about Cognitive Engineering - Intelligent Enterprise RPA Adoption. Jonathon showed why the approaches and techniques that used to work in the past may no longer work in the future, and why a solution for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can help enterprises to integrate applications faster.
In conclusion, one can say that the first VCD events were a full success. Besides a lot of work, they were a lot of fun for us and hopefully for everyone else. For all those who missed the sessions live, here's the good news again, that the on-demand recordings are now available to all Vivit members. And in 2020 there will be a continuation...
