The IBM Pulse 2012 Circus Begins

Greetings from Viva Las Vegas, Nevada.

I arrived here under the cover of darkness yesterday.

Actually, I arrived in the afternoon, but “cover of darkness” sounds so much more dramatic.

It’s been a crazy week on the road, but we’re only halfway through. Now, Pulse 2012 starts.

Pulse is one of my favorite IBM Software events.  It was Tivoli that brought me back to my native Texas, and to Austin in particular, in the summer of 2001.

I made a lot of great friends during my time working with the Tivoli brand, and I also got a lot of great work done.

And Tivoli has evolved over the past eleven years.  Dramatically.

I need not tell any Tivolian, customer or employee, that.

For my money, it’s evolved all for the better.  The focus of the Tivoli business has far expanded well beyond its core systems management focus, which is what it was centered around when I arrived.

Here’s a factoid: I’ve never seen a Cirques du Soleil performance.  Until last night, when I took in the “Ka” show here at the MGM Grand.

That might seem like a random transition.  But follow me here.  A Cirques du Soleil performance is like one big ecosystem that must be managed across its disparate parts.

A former theatre major myself, I watched in fascination at all the systems that were in play during the Cirques’ performance of “Ka.”  The massive staging and hydraulic systems.  The flying systems that allowed the performers to defy gravity.  The house staff that welcomed the audience into the show.  The audience itself.  The cast. The scores of stagehands in the background.

If you’ve seen a Cirques du Soleil performance, you know of which I speak: It’s a massive and complex linkage of disparate systems coming together to create the wonder that are their shows.

These days, your world is a lot like all those systems.  And to be able to understand and manage it all, and extract new value out of the knowledge you have about all those systems…well, that’s where Tivoli comes in.

I’m going to leave it at that, lest you think I’m completely off my rocker.  But, I’ve done my homework preparing for Pulse 2012, and between the focus on managing mobile, physical assets and infrastructure, the cloud, and the underlying security, there’s plenty of opportunity for systems linkage and improved understanding of those systems.

So, welcome to Las Vegas for Pulse 2012.

Speaking of systems, be sure and check your bathroom for Bengali tigers.  I think it’s just always better to be safe than sorry.

In the meantime, keep an eye here on the Turbo blog and on the Twitter hashtag #ibmpulse.  There’s going to be a firehose of information coming at you these next few days!