Ask TPM: Where Is the System i Technical Conference?

Published: March 31, 2008

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

While IBM has been pretty tight-lipped about whatever announcement it has in store for the COMMON user group town hall meeting that is slated for April 2, there is some evidence that is coming to me from a different source--and intended to only answer a separate question--that indicates that my hunch that IBM is going to converge the System i and System p brands is probably correct.

One System i shop sent me an email a few weeks ago, asking me when and where the next System i Technical Conference would be held. I made some smart-aleck comment about not being a search engine, but alas, this shop was indeed on to something. In the wake of the System and Technology Group restructuring that did away with the System i division and that created the Power Systems division for system development and manufacturing and the Business Systems and Enterprise Systems for selling different classes of IBM iron, Big Blue apparently also rejiggered its System i and System p Technical Conferences. IBM hosted events for these two product lines, and the System i education team had two System i tech conferences (one in spring and one in fall) in North America and one in Europe each year.

Since the January STG reorganization, the tech conferences have been "realigned to Power systems," according to an IBM spokesperson. The first merged Power Systems Technical Conference will be held in Barcelona, Spain, from June 2 through 6, which you can find out more about at this link. The North American Power Systems Technical Conference, which you can get information about at this link, is being held in Chicago, Illinois, from September 8 through 12.

So, to be technical, the answer to the question, "Where is the System i Technical Conference?" I would have to say: In the history books.

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