Thursday, January 11, 2018

Serverless Presenting at IBM Think


IBM Think LogoGreetings one and all to my first blog post of 2018.

I gathered you here today to admit that I was rewarded by my creative writing efforts with an acceptance email to come speak at the ultimate IBM event of the year, IBM Think.

In 2018 IBM has decided there should only be one event to "rule them all" and dropped all of the division events including many of my dear readers favorite Lotusphere IBM Connect.

Las Vegas, where the event will be held at the Mandalay Bay on March 18-22 will be like going to an all day concert where you will listen to everyone, but really just want to hear a few artists.

Naturally my ICS side hopes/expects there to be enough to keep me and the faithful happy.
With an estimated 100 tracks (just kidding, but if a normal event has 5-10, this could have 30+?)I also look forward to learning and seeing more about other areas of IBM's world that most likely you, and I, never knew existed. Examples? How about:

  • The AI Bar where it knows your mood when you walk in and provides the appropriate drink.
  • The IoT Plane Seat that automatically reduces the movement of your chair if you have unruly adults behind you.
  • Collaborative lunch plans when your email/chat/IM/text/messenger/Facebook/Twitter feed senses you should eat and go with people ready at the same time. (choice of foods is still left to you)
  • Teenager Security, keeping you alert to when your teenager....
  • Beer chilled data center servers, because once you move non essential stuff to The Cloud, you need to get some ROI from that space and every company should have their own microbrewery.

Yes, in addition will be the Websphere, DB2, Tivoli, MAAS360, Trusteer, Smarter Planet, I P and Z series hardware, Kenexa, Redbooks and lots of things you never knew IBM sold.

Okay, what am I presenting on you ask? Here you go:
I'm a Lego Man living in a Duplo World
"Try it you'll like it", works for food, alcohol and TV shows, but doesn't work very well for software, does it? You know what works in software? Headless, adminless, serverless, payless parts and pieces. We live in a Lego world and piece by piece you need to build your world with as little as possible that is interchangeable as well. Finding the right piece that fits just the way you need it to do so, is all that matters.
I know what you are thinking, wtf is he talking about? 

Honestly when I revisited my submission notes, I am not sure either, my notes scribbled at 3am were impractically illegible.

How do you try IBM Cloud when you are not a developer? It's like going to the Whisky bar and being unable to make a choice because you never drink scotch, whisky, bourbon or rye.

Can one just "use an email service" without a server and license? 
Should you? 
Would you? 

How do you manage all these parts and pieces? Do you use a different piece for security or trust the one inside the IBM(or AWS, Azure, etc.) Cloud?
How do you monitor them since any one part can fail and kill your solution?

All of this and more, well what will fit in my time slot.

If you have any ideas or thoughts on this, questions, or maybe your company provides some of the tools I discussed, let me know about them.

See you all in Vegas! For more information go to IBM Think.