The pressure to perform has never been greater for IT. Under the gun to help their businesses compete, everyone in IT today—from practitioners to managers and leaders—now face rapidly changing requirements to operate more efficiently, deliver applications faster, and ensure higher degrees of security.

These days trade and business publications are buzzing  about the big technology trends that are impacting or are expected to greatly change the world—cloud computing, big data, consumerization of IT and security. Companies need to know all they can about these trends, because these technologies either will disrupt IT and/or the business or they can adversely impact the business if not adopted early enough.

One IT expert who knows about these trends, and what you can do to keep a step ahead of them, is Mark Potts, HP Fellow and Chief Technology Officer for HP Software.

By Phil Nguyen

How does security and application management change in the cloud? Managing the application lifecycle for the cloud requires some different approaches to ensure agility, scalability and security within private, public and hybrid cloud environments.

In the latest This Week in Cloud video, Rafal Los, Chief Security Evangelist at HP Software presented four key elements an organization needs to adopt across the service delivery lifecycle:

By Phil Nguyen

Community Manager for HP's IT Expert Community

When preparing for the cloud, it’s important to make decisions that proactively minimize any complexity that it could introduce.

I have a new  64-inch 3-D television and I’m hooked. I just can’t get enough 3-D entertainment, especially the computer-generated creations of DreamWorks Animation, the studio behind blockbuster movies such as Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and the upcoming Madagascar 3. As an HP employee I can tell you it’s very cool that DreamWorks Animation is made possible by HP technology. 

That’s why I’m excited that Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation, will be a special guest speaker at HP Discover 2012, HP’s biggest customer and partner event, slated for June 4-7 in Las Vegas at the Venetian/Palazzo Resort Complex. Katzenberg has been a fan of HP for more than a decade, and in just five weeks, he will share how HP technology helps DreamWorks to expand its creative boundaries

In Episode 3 this week of the cloud video series, Paul Muller and Christian Verstraete, chief technologist of cloud strategy for HP, look at building internal services vs. external services, and how businesses can approach transforming legacy applications and business processes to take advantage of a hybrid cloud deployment model.

While HP Discover has a reputation for hosting top-notch entertainment along with a schedule chock full of informative sessions (800 to choose from in 2012), I didn’t think we could top the entertainment from last year. But the final evening of 2012 upholds the tradition of bringing something special to attendees, with not one Grammy-award winning artist but two performing on the same night, Sheryl Crow followed by Don Henley, founding member of The Eagles and solo rock star in his own right.

Tuesday evening also promises a chance to relax after an insightful day at breakout sessions and keynotes with a sneak peek of the new movie Madagascar 3, the same week that it opens in theatres across the U.S.  DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg will talk about how HP technology helps bring movies like Madagascar 3 to the big screen.   

Susan Merriman

WW Leader of Emerging Technologies, HPSW Education

Training is vital during the initial stages of a software implementation: but new issues always arise when employees actually start using the system. Ongoing education is essential to ensure the success of your deployment. Susan Merriman discusses the best ways to approach follow-up IT training.  

Every IT expert wants to learn how to make the IT department perform better. If that’s your goal, then you should seriously consider joining 10,000 of your peers at  HP Discover Vegas 2012. If you can make it to only one IT event this year, Discover Vegas should be on your short list. But don’t delay. Register now to save $300 off the conference fee and reserve the best sessions before they are closed.  See below for details.

By Susan Merriman

WW Leader of Emerging Technologies, HPSW Education

So we’ve got you this far: you realize that educated employees are efficient employees and that investing in training is as important as investing in software – but education needs to be effective. Poorly planned, insufficiently budgeted and untargeted training is simply a waste of time and money. Susan Merriman outlines the potential pitfalls of substandard software education.  

By Susan Merriman 

WW Leader of Emerging Technologies, HPSW Education

Software applications are only as efficient and effective as the staff using them – IT training can make the difference between an implementation being a spectacular success and a colossal catastrophe.

From abandoned multi-national expansions to missed quarterly numbers, Susan Merriman outlines the disastrous consequences of ignoring IT training, and explains why education really is the passport to your company’s future.  

Join enterprise IT leaders from around the world at HP’s largest global conference!

More than 10,000 IT executives, managers, architects, engineers, and solution experts from around the world will gather at HP Discover to explore pivotal technology developments, strategies, and best practices.

Featuring a broad, deep array of 800+ business and technical sessions, HP Discover will fully equip your organization to convert data into value, technology into solutions, and opportunity into economic and social impact.

Register now and save $300 off the registration price.

For your organization to grow its market share, your mobile apps must run faster and better than those of your competitors. That means Ops has a major role to play in the mobile revolution. But if you want to be successful, get involved long before it’s time to start monitoring. Ask these six questions to make mobile application monitoring easier.

If you are not among the lucky 6,000 people attending Discover Vienna, but you would like to learn about the best of the more than 500 content-rich sessions, 45 hands-on labs, and 100 HP Experts in Meet-the-Expert sessions, then we have just the ticket for you.  

Bookmark this URL (www.hp.com/go/discovervienna) because we’ll be posting show updates right from the exhibit floor to keep you up to date of the latest news and happenings during HP Discover Vienna, Nov. 29-Dec. 1. Resident expert and HPSW Vice President Paul Muller and his co-hosts along with a team of bloggers will guide you through the event highlighting the key announcements, discussions and takeaways with videos and blog posts right from the event. 

We’ll feature special videos, blogs and content of interest. Don't forget to bookmark this site.  It’s your chance to peek behind the curtain at HP DISCOVER VIENNA.  It's the next best thing to attending the show itself.  

By Myles F. Suer, Planning and Governance, HP Software

When I was young, the cool movie to see and talk about was “The Magnificent Seven”. For those that do not remember, the movie was about seven gunslingers that help a town take on an army of bandits.

Perhaps the movie works so well because there are seven heroes. Psychologists have found that the maximum things that the human mind can think about at one time are seven. Recently, as customers have started asking me what they should measure in IT, I have come back to the notion of a “magnificent seven.” Which key performance indicators (KPIs) would be on my list to truly make IT organizations better?

In this third installment of a four-part blog series, Erik van Busschbach, Worldwide Program Director, HP Software Services explains how HP Software Services can help you implement the IT Performance Suite with minimal risk. The team helps you create a strategy and approach to quickly implement the IT Performance Suite so you gain value faster. Throughout the deployment, measurements are applied to achieve early success and drive momentum. Core to our approach is the application of our Common Solutions Framework  (CSF) that powers our software solutions.

In  Part One of this four-part blog series, Erik van Busschbach, Program Director (World Wide, based in EMEA, Netherlands) HP Software Services explains how HP Software Services can help you implement the IT Performance Suite with minimal risk. The team helps you create a strategy and approach to quickly implement the IT Performance Suite so your organization gains value faster. Throughout the deployment, measurements are applied to achieve early success and drive momentum. Core to our approach is the application of our Common Solutions Framework (CSF) that powers our software solutions.

In this first post of the series, Erik discusses the IT supply chain

In my last post, I told you about two new online assessments that were among the many demos I visited at HP Discover Software Pavilion in Las Vegas, June 6-10.  Thomas Farrell, Chief Architect, Professional Services, was nice enough to serve as host for the videos demonstrating both assessment tools. 

 Today at HP DISCOVER, our premiere customer event in Las Vegas,  I had the opportunity to test drive a new CIO assessment tool that can serve as the first step toward helping CIOs gain respect and demonstrate their value to the business.  It's easy and it's fun.  And you gain valuable information.  For example, you can learn whether compared to your peers if your innovation spend is high, low or just right.

If you are at DISCOVER, stop by the assessment booth in the Software Pavilion.  If you couldn't make it to DISCOVER, you can still take the online assessment.

See what was happening at HP DISCOVER.

Click here to see HP DISCOVER tweets up to the minute.

By Heather Sieberg

Worldwide Public Relations Manager, HP Software 

Building on last week’s announcement of #HP IT Performance Suite, @HPSoftware is thrilled to attend HP Discover, here in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

There’s a lot of things to do here at #HPDiscover – and we wanted to join in the excitement and kick things off with a Twitter-based scavenger hunt, for virtual and on-site event attendees, starting Monday, June 6, 2011.

We’re calling it #ITPERFORM and can’t wait for everyone to share in the adventure. 

Who can play?

Anyone that follows @HPSoftware on Twitter.  This includes our amazing HP customers, partners and employees. 

In my original post Announcing the APM 6 city test drive, we didn’t have the dates for May, now we do.

May 11  Toronto Rogers Center
May 19  The Westin Buckhead Atlanta
May 24  The Renaissance Columbus Downtown Hotel

Join the APM (Application Performance Management) product marketing team, along with an APM9 customer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida on the road for an interactive event where you’ll be able to test drive HP Application Performance Management.

Victor Miller Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida

The HP Software User Forum for Australia will be in Sydney 10 May 2011 and Melbourne 18 May 2011.  If you’ll be in the area, you are invited to create amazing connections at a meeting of our HP Software Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Business Service Management (BSM) and IT Service Management (ITSM) user communities.

Our Information Management team is happy to announce six products and one service.

Mike Shaw presents on how we can help with IT Operations.

From Applications to Zippy (huh?), here’s a guide to HP Software for the familiar and the unfamiliar alike. Think you know all about what products, solutions and services HP Software offers to help you meet your business and IT challenges?  You just might be surprised what you learn.  Here’s Part One of  our three-part series entitled “HP Software from A to Z and what it means to you.”

One of my favorite television shows is Jeopardy!  For those of you not familiar with the game show, it works like this:  Three contestants are given an “answer” and must formulate their response in the form of a question.  The answers are grouped in categories.  One frequently used category is called “Common Bonds.”  In this category contestants are given a list of three items and they need to come up with what each item has in common with the others. 

Today‘s blog post features one Jeopardy!-like quiz challenge.  The three items listed in the category Common Bonds are:  Megatrends, eReaders and cloud computing.  Your job is to come up with the common bond that connects all three. You have sixty seconds to formulate your answer.

As we are preparing for HP Software Universe in Barcelona I interviewed Paul Muller, Vice President, Strategic Marketing, Software Products, HP Software about his observations of Software Universe in Washington D.C. last June.

Fans of our graphic novel, The Coder, are in for a real treat this week as  “Season One” wraps up in Episode 14.