BITUG will hold annual Little SIG at Barclays’ Canary Wharf offices, December 7th

The British Isles regional user group, BITUG, has for some time now held SIG events both big and small. The Big SIGs have often coincided with pan-European events but when it comes to Little SIGs, the agenda is more tightly focused on the needs of the local BITUG community. As such, this isn’t a statement about providing watered-down content but rather an opportunity for more in-depth coverage of specific topics.

This year, the 2017 BITUG Little SIG will be held on December, 7^th at the Barclays’ Canary Wharf offices. A separate web page has been created in support of this event where you will be able to register for the event (and a reminder that for security reasons you must register for this event and not just turn up on the day as Barclays will not let you in unregistered) as well as find an agenda for the event:

https://www.bitug.com/little-sig/

Following a very successful pan-European eBITUG held in May of this year, we are running this Little SIG which will be a single track event with no vendor fare.

As for the highlight of this upcoming SIG, then expect to hear a lot more about –

• Roadmap of the HPE NonStop platform …
• Updates from the BootCamp and personal views from those members of the committee at the Bootcamp
• Tuning and performance analysis of Java (a lot of companies are using Java, but don’t know how to get the best from it).
• Updates from IBM about MQ8 and from ATALLA, including coverage of HSM as well as an update following the spin-merge out of HPE and into Micro Focus!
• What is happening with vNonStop?
• The HPE NonStop is now a collection of smaller servers and computers, how do you keep up to date with the firmware for all these components.

When it comes to highlights for this Little SIG then perhaps we should be drawing more attention to the tuning and performance analysis of Java. When you consider the skillsets on hand at most NonStop installations, this is perhaps one area where there is a real need to devote more time to education and to expose the NonStop community to more knowledgeable folks capable of steering conversations in the right direction. Clearly, with Java 8 now available and with the additional CPU power that has come with embracing the Intel x86 architecture, more Java based solutions will likely find their way onto the NonStop platform so sharing knowledge and experience should prove invaluable for all those who elect to attend the event in December.

As for  roadmap presentations apart from the updates to major infrastructure and subsystem offerings, one other item stands out that is particularly relevant for the BITUG NonStop community – firmware! The firmware on NonStop systems is an area which has caught out several companies that failed to realize that their firmware was out of date; learning how to upgrade firmware, and when to upgrade, will be covered in this Little SIG.

Finally, every year we have to have an Annual General Meeting (AGM) to re-elect the committee and this is the time where we see if we can get new blood onto board. It is also the time to say how we have spent the 2016 money. So if the opportunity to volunteer your time in support of your fellow NonStop colleagues is something you might like to do, this will be the occasion to let the committee know of your interest. We would only be too happy to have a chat and perhaps, you will become a more active and indeed visible member of our BITUG community.

Neil Barnes
BITUG Chairman

neil.barnes@bitug.com