By: Rocky Pisto,
Vivit Engage Liaison

As an IT professional for 37 years, I've seen a lot of changes in IT and our careers. A peer once told me many years ago that “if you don't change and move forward, you will fall back and be left behind”. The same holds true for our members in the Vivit Community. Change is good, and learning new technologies helps grow your career.

Vivit recently surveyed its members to determine the value that the Micro Focus Independent User Group brings to its members - and what we can do to improve. To those that took the survey, we say thank you very much. Your feedback is key to the changes we make to support your career. For those that did not take the survey and want to know what your peers are thinking, I have highlighted the results below.

At a high level, the bullet list below contains a few examples of what do members want from the Micro Focus Independent User Group to help grow their careers:

• Customer case studies was the # 1 request.  Real world experience end users have with the tools far exceeds all other answers
• Micro Focus software and open source integration
• More technical presentation
• In depth technical knowledge sharing, round table virtual and physical location discussion
• Non Micro Focus vendor comparisons, or comparison of legacy HPE tools and Micro Focus tools
• More advanced deep topic discussion, typically integration topics
• 3-4 hour deep dive presentations on how the tools work

In the survey we drilled down into "What core Micro Focus products are currently in use in your business?"

Through the years of this organization, the product mix has changed from a strictly operations community with HP OpenView solutions in the early 1990's to a larger testing user base with the Mercury acquisition in 2008. Based on current active member’s survey results, ALM related product use is still the strongest segment of our community at over 55.77%; followed by ITOM or Operations at 35.77%.

HP continued to fill gaps in the Enterprise Software solutions area with a number of acquisitions through the years which encouraged users to join Vivit. At this point we have been growing our membership base in Security, Big Data, Cloud, Information Management and Governance through conference membership and webinar activity. With the Micro Focus spin merge, we expect to gain additional members from future software silo consolidation and new tool acquisitions. Our expectation is that our 40,000+ membership will continue to grow at a steady pace and become even more engaged.

Vivit surveyed the membership to discover “What is your role in your organization?” Of the members that took the survey, 62.71% roles were management related. End user/admin roles represented 28%. Micro Focus partners at 6.47% as well as Micro Focus personnel at 2.82%.

This was surprising; the true ratio of our membership is represented with about a 50% management and 50% practitioner segments. Based on the high number of management surveys, it was interesting that the focus was still to have a better understanding of how other customers are using the products successfully; desiring to share that information with other members.

Based on our survey, Vivit members are telling us how we can do a better job to support their careers. The breakdown of service offering areas for improvement are the following:

• Webinar topics
• Local User Groups
• Education
• Advocacy
• Blog topics 

Webinars

What do our members want in future webinar content? Based on the recent survey, they are asking for a more technical focus in webinar content, more end user experience, case studies, third party integration discussions, and round table focused on best practices. There is a feeling that less time should be spent on setting up the business proposition before diving into the solution. They want Vivit to encourage Micro Focus to share more details on new features, functionality, and improvements in future releases and to be an advocate on what  features our members are most interested in. 

Key areas of interest for future webinars include Dev/Ops discussions, PPM, automation tools, Cloud offerings and an overall Micro Focus forward-look at tools and support. More information on third party integrations was another key request from customers. Third http://www.vivit-worldwide.org/general/?type=CONTACT party solutions discussion for the most part would have to come from Micro Focus partners, though we are seeing some Micro Focus discussion around integration with open source solutions. If you are an end user company and would like to share your experience with Micro Focus Software please contact Vivit. 

Local User Groups

With regards to Local User Group (LUGs), members surveyed would like to see more events in their region. Peer-to-peer events where customers can learn from each other in a networking setting is the number one requested service. Second behind actual Vivit LUG events, is the ability to have more customer presentations at LUG events. Most of the current LUG events are focused on mainly ADM, and ITOM which includes some ITSM events.

Members are asking for other topic areas of the Micro Focus solutions like Application Security, Vertica, Big Data and Information Management events. Also, there is a desire to see more activity in Canada, New Jersey and LUG events in Nordic countries. We are always looking for volunteer Local User Group Leaders that focus on these solutions and/or other Micro Focus solution areas to support their community. Micro Focus partners and customers can become LUG Leaders. If you are looking for networking opportunities and supporting your local community, become a LUG Leader. Contact our Vivit liaisons today!

Education

Vivit works closely with Micro Focus Software Education teams to bring awareness to training offerings to support our community. Listed below are some of the survey requests for more available training. Vivit is expecting a new strategic direction with future content sharing opportunities.

• Live Training was the #1 request
• Specialized Virtual Training programs
• Tutorials
• Training for Testing Cloud Apps
• Deep Dive Sessions
• App Services training with Fortify tools

Advocacy

Advocacy, one of three Vivit core pillars, also came up in the survey. Vivit has always supported sharing enhancement requests with Micro Focus Product Management teams. Survey participants suggested finding a way to coordinate with Micro Focus either on a link to a page or building a support landing page to show a listing of enhancement requests, current issues and resolutions; or a general FAQ landing page for topics of current fixes.

Listed below are some of the requests from the survey response:

• The ability to influence priorities for product development
• Landing page to voice request for changes to current products
• Landing page for emerging issues and fixes
  
• FAQ site for useful topics regarding real world customer issues

Blog topics

There were a few blog requests from the survey responses:

• Hot topics of the week
• A strategy for Service Desk to ITSM customers
• Go forward strategy

We could work with Micro Focus product teams to share relevant topics of the week.

We appreciate all the feedback to date. If you would want to add additional feedback, we are always ready to listen.

Support the community that supports you and get engaged.