IBM InterConnect 2016: Sounding Off

This years IBM InterConnect in Las Vegas was spectacular. Our DevOps.com team covered as many of the 300+ DevOps tracks and sessions that we could. We have been editing video and getting ready to report on the show since then. Finally, we have enough ready and the time to give our full report.

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The last 6 weeks or so have been a rush here at DevOps.com. I literally went straight from IBM InterConnect in Las Vegas to RSA Conference in San Francisco. Coming home from 2 weeks on the road I threw myself into putting the final touches on our DevOps Connect: CD Summit/Jenkins Days events this spring (click the link for more details on these upcoming events).

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So much to report from InterConnect that I haven’t had a chance to write up, but the good news is we have the videos to share with you all. The videos will be available on our DevOps.com YouTube Channel under the playlist InterConnect 2016. We will feature some of the best in the days and weeks to come.

Before I share the first batch of videos though I wanted to briefly go over what I consider the main news and themes of IBM InterConnect 2016:

IBM and GitHub partner to deliver GitHub Enterprise as a hosted service or dedicated GitHub. While GitHub needs no introduction to most of you reading this, the ability to host your own GitHub enterprise version for your own private cloud or hybrid cloud is a major plus for organizations uncomfortable using a public repository for their code. I had a chance to speak with both IBM and GitHub folks at InterConnect and the videos on those will be available shortly. But if you are a Git user this could be something that really makes your day.
IBM and VMware partner for seamless migration of VM workloads. I think this is really the short term biggest game changer coming out of InterConnect. Now all of of those VMware setups sitting in peoples private datacenter and server closets can be seamlessly moved to the cloud on IBM. While VMware always offered snap backups and such, this really makes it a no brainer to move your on premises VMware set up to the cloud quickly and painlessly.
IBM brings Swift to Servers in the cloud. Swift has quickly become one of most used languages to develop client side application (mostly iPhone). IBM announced they were contributing code to the Swift community that will enable server-side Swift allowing developers who already know the language to work on the server side. Additionally, IBM Cloud via SoftLayer will be server side Swift ready. This was more of a roadmap announcement with more code and functionality to come. Important about this one is it represents some of the first fruit we have seen from the Apple-IBM partnership announced previously.
Cognitive. I know it is a buzzword, but look beyond the buzzword. Cognitive, AI or whatever you want to call it has the potential to have the biggest long term impact on how we live our life every day. Not only is IBM making great strides in Watson and cognitive capabilities, the real story is they are making it really easy for developers to hook into via API and bring this cognitive capability to developers everywhere. I spoke to one IBM security person who literally overnight used Watson cognitive to help prioritize large enterprise vulnerabilities. I spoke to another entrepreneur (video just needs her OK to release) who used Watson’s cognitive thinking to make what they claim is the smartest dating app in the market today. But frankly this stuff just barely touches the surface. Cognitive is going to touch everything we so including the IoT space, automation, health care, science and more. We may be seeing the birth of the next big thing right before our eyes.
Bluemix Garage and Bluemix Garage Method – You will see several videos around the Bluemix Garage and the Bluemix Garage Method. In fact the Bluemix Garage area on the expo floor was the most visited exhibit at the show (well except for the Elton John concert I guess). In fact our first video today is a tour of the Bluemix Garage setup on the expo floor with Rachel Reinitz and Sarah Plantenberg, two of the key leaders of the team there. Bluemix Garage is key to the “innovate like a startup, scale to the enterprise” theme that was very prevalent at InterConnect. IBM is setting up Bluemix Garages all over the world to allow teams from enterprises to come in and learn how innovate like a startup. It gives them that startup feel, but with IBM’s own experience, as well as that of others who have been through the program to learn from. In fact IBM has codified this into the Bluemix Garage Method. More than just code, it is also the processes, policies and protocols that IBM has gathered as emerging best practices for how do get things done in a DevOps/Agile manner.

I have been following the Bluemix Garage stuff since it was announced at Gene Kim’s DevOps Enterprise Summit last October and am happy to see the progress Rachel and team are making.

So below is our first video in the IBM InterConnect 2016 series. It is a tour of the Bluemix Garage on the expo floor this year. Below it are links to two other videos also on Bluemix Garage and Bluemix Garage Method. You can see more on the playlist we have set up.