Developers remain a core population in the demography of IT. They are as critical to the technology success of the enterprise as any other officer. Developers are the exponents of change and new solutions. They allow a company to grasp mobile and cloud technologies with understanding rather than uncertainty.
Such is the significance of the developer role that in planning the curriculum for Impact 2014 IBM is offering a development-specific track at the show later this month.
Developers should be sure to check out dev@Impact which will present hands-on encounters with solutions drawn from the powerful mobile analytics cloud and Internet of Things technologies. Guests can attend mentor sessions and engage in dialogue at every turn.
This track looks at the key combination of community-based open technologies and open architecture. Speed of course is the desired characteristic of IT today. But interoperability is important as well with enterprises running diverse applications across infrastructures and sometimes vast distances. With business unfolding at tremendous pace developers can swiftly build applications that integrate these qualities and grant their companies agility and efficiency.
Gartner suggests that IT should empower itself in the quest to develop mobile technologies so developers will want to check out the dev@Impact session entitled “Build Test & Deploy Killer Mobile Applications”. Experts will explain how to build and test mobile applications using IBM cloud technology IBM BlueMix and IBM Worklight.
Developers can also make themselves valuable for companies that prioritize analytics as a strategic necessity. Customers express their attitude toward businesses through social media and the knowledge inherent in this sentiment data can be crucial to marketers. Developers interested in capturing the essence of customer opinion should attend “The Digital Mood Ring—Sentiment Analysis Using Big Data & Analytics” which will feature exposure to Hadoop and IBM InfoSphere BigInsights.
Of course Impact 2014 will dazzle as well as inform and dev@Impact offers some gems for those looking to play with the latest technological toys. The Parrot quadrocopter is driven by four horizontal propellers and can record video footage as it flies overhead. Participants can learn to control these aerial vehicles in “Fly Drones with IBM's Internet of Things Cloud”.
Last week James Governor of Redmonk and IBM’s Ben Mann gave a preview of the conference’s developer curriculum in a Webcast on the Global WebSphere Community “dev@Impact: Learn how IBM Impact 2014 will explore the changing role of the developer”.
Long development time frames don’t make sense in the present business environment. IT departments need to get faster and more effective “and one of the ways to do this is to take advantage of new technology—and let the engineers make the choices” explained Governor.
Governor and Mann observed the altering environment in which developers IT's "kingmakers" can acquire and deploy applications. “We’ve seen a huge transition” said Governor “so you not only get software and the storage at very low cost you now tie in communications where developers can work together and you have an opportunity to innovate that has become really useful to organizations.”
Ben Mann explained that cloud-based development is the center of gravity in Internet of Things planning with professionals focused on on-boarding devices. “The goal there is to have a cloud environment that is very secure for developers to get devices on board and to program the logic into what happens when those devices interact.”
Impact 2014 will explore the opportunities developers have to make themselves kings in this age of tech-facilitated commerce.
Announced with IBM’s inspiring Be First slogan Impact is offering several tracks for attendees who will be enjoying a week’s worth of education networking fun and great weather in Las Vegas.
The Smarter Process track presents solutions that are enabling companies to run customer-centric operations throughout the business structure. This is the Age of the Customer as IBM says and consumers will engage with a business or leave it based on how well every transaction goes.
In one Smarter Process sub-track attendees can learn about Smarter Process linkages and integration with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Master Data Management (MDM) Analytics ERP CRM and other systems. Guests can also learn from use cases of Smarter Process technologies that have won customers and achieved efficiencies in dozens of industries from banking to aviation.
Another interesting track is the Integration focus. One of the most common questions facing enterprises is how to link apps mobile technology data and diverse applications throughout the enterprise. IBM’s sessions cover enterprise and cloud integration APIs—“the fastest growing business channel”—and again use cases that illustrate how commerce is integration technologies to great advantage.
Developers should check out the dev@Impact agenda on the event site and IBM’s Impact site has all the information about tracks schedules locations speakers keynotes and more. The Governor and Mann Webcast replay is available here.