The OH Summit 2018 in Berlin – Bridging the Old and the New

The Open Horizons Summit 2018 took place as the Micro Focus Channel Community Conference from June 4-7, 2018 in Berlin, in the Marriott and Ritz Carlton Hotels at Potsdamer Platz, right next to the Brandenburger Tor. It was a very interesting event with many facets and impressions, and we want to use this post to give you a review of the event from the perspective of Code and Concept for all who could not participate, who chose not to participate, or those attendees who are wondering if there was something they missed. We’ll start with general thoughts, and then cover Hotlabs, sessions, and last but not least our favourite topic: Micro Focus Vibe.

Much has changed

This year, the OH Summit moved its location from Budapest to Berlin. On top of that, the Summit got a subtitle, a new main target group and a new supporting organisation. The OH Summit is now subtitled as “Micro Focus Channel Community Conference” and targets mainly channel partners as a complement to the “Micro Focus Universe” event for customers that took place in Monaco in March. Customers continue to be welcome at the Summit, and a large number followed the invitation. The main sponsor of the event is now Micro Focus, and contrary to previous years, other sponsors were not present anymore.

This time, the Tech Lounge was not filled with offerings and information from co3tools, engl, FairCom, GroupLink, MTRIX, NEXPERT, ROVABU, SEP, SkyPRO, SUSE und TDP, but with booths representing the various business areas and units of the new Micro Focus, now grown by the HP Enterprise Software business. However, with 300+ products in the portfolio of Micro Focus, there was more content available than one could reasonably consume in the time given. Probably due to the changes mentioned, the delegate count has doubled compared to 2017, and now reached around 460. The Micro Focus organisation underwent a lot of changes over the recent years, and as the prime European event around Micro Focus, the Open Horizons Summit also evolves.

Right along the theme of the Micro Focus motto, the OH Summit 2018 also was in the process of “bridging the old and the new”. The new organisation behind the products that delegates have gotten used to and hold dear did not only introduce and present itself, it also exposed itself knowingly to the close-knit community of disciples of the products from the “heritage Micro Focus”-, “heritage Attachmate Group”- and “heritage Novell”-portfolio. The attendees from these groups explored the newly extended software ecosystem and not only exposed themselves to the new organisation, but also faced up to a new way of working and of interacting with customers and partners. Those delegates want to rest assured that their core products are there to stay and are being developed further. Micro Focus is now in the possession of software that represents an integral part of the infrastructure and working processes in enterprises and organisations, and of software that has been maintained together with partners in a very productive ecosystem for many years – Micro Focus might just be selling software, but together with the partners, Micro Focus, by association, provides premium solutions in many fields. Naturally, the attendees do hope to keep the appreciation given and the esteem in which they traditionally are held as knowledge holders and as “front line fighters”, and that the value of the community is being recognised, used and expanded upon by Micro Focus.

Having the situation just described as a backdrop, it is not a surprise that the keynote presentations were not regarded with favour by the people from the tight community and amongst the attendees of many an OH Summit in the past. They were lacking a consistent overview of solutions, products and roadmaps, the keynotes had not actually been adapted to the needs and interests of the delegates. The presentations were kept very generic and broad and in essence conveyed how many products have been assembled under the roof of the Micro Focus brand. – Those who were mainly interested in traditional OH Summit focus, being the products of the former Novell and NetIQ brands, had to keep their patience until the award dinner to soothe their appetites. The total absence of the SUSE business unit was also registered by delegates and critically commented upon. The mood was lifted when, towards the end of the keynote day, two very special partner awards were presented to well-known people: one was presented to the OH organisation – represented here by Marco Mikulits, Diethmar Rimser, Paul Van der Cruyssen and John Ellis – and the second award – the only one of the event going to a single person – was presented to Robin Redgrave, a pillar of the community and a representation of the valuable link between the company and the community.

From Tuesday on, the further course of the Summit was characterized by Hotlabs, Business Sessions, Mixed Sessions, Focus Groups and Customer Advisory Boards. The delegate count and the number of presentations led to the conference being split into two locations. Occasionally, it was not easy to run into each other “as a coincidence”, except of course during the breaks that were marked by the usual enjoyable food and drink in copious amounts.

The traditional OH Summit quiz night could not take place because of space limitations, and was sorely missed. In its place, there was a community meet-up at c-base, an event location with a real hacker background and a good reputation especially among IT folks. Here, the delegates had the time and opportunity to talk without the pressure of the event schedule. Pictures taken at recent Summits were displaced on a big screen in a continuous loop, and nostalgia was guaranteed to arise, given this emotional ‘bridging the old and the new’.

Hotlabs – a tried and tested model

The Hotlabs held during the event were well attended. The largest rush was witnessed towards the products and services around OES and Filr, for products from the business area of Information Management and Governance (IM&G), that had shown great advancements and development efforts in recent times and that shine with many new features. These Hotlabs were followed closely by a large, homogenous palette of solutions from all business areas of Micro Focus, so apart from IM&G also from the areas of Security, Application Delivery Management (ADM) and IT Operations Management (ITOM). In that group, much interest was given to products from the former HP Enterprise Software that are new and interesting to OH Summit-veterans, like e.g. ArcSight. The midfield of attendance rates was then covered by Hotlabs on topics mainly from collaboration and from the segment of “Best Practice”.

Our own Hotlab – of course on Vibe – was visited by thirty delegates, eighteen of which were partners, who either want to start using Vibe in house or with customers, or who receive increasing amounts of requests for Vibe from customers. The other participants were customers, who wanted to deepen their knowledge about Vibe or wanted to get into first contact with the topic.
A short introductory round showed, amazingly, that in the lab room were 500 years of cumulated experience with products from Novell or Micro Focus, even though there were a noticeable number of fresh faces. During this lab, we found – even though concrete knowledge about the ins and outs of NetWare and IPX may not be applicable anymore, today – that experience with powerful, well structured and secure systems is not to be underestimated as an advantage when working on a highly current topic like online collaboration.

The concept of the OH Hotlabs has worked well and proven itself once more, and again, Rob Bastiaansen and his crew did a great job providing the hardware, setting up the labs and rooms, and supporting the speakers wherever they could.