Although it is normally nice to return home after a stint of living out of a suitcase, it was definitely a shame to leave the sun and surf of Orlando. There must be something about someone who lives in a “cooler” part of the world heading to warmer climates, as last week literally flew by. Today is rainy and cold in Minneapolis, and I am already aching to hop the quick three-hour flight back down to the sandy beaches. (Not that I spent any time there during the conference, of course!)

In all seriousness, the COMMON annual meeting was a great success for us. Three days of exposure at the expo talking to existing customers about their successes, as well as new faces that are learning how PowerTech can bring so much value to IBM i security projects.

While it seems a few of the attendees were unaware that PowerTech is a member of the Help/Systems family until they saw the joint booth and marquee, the number of people that walked by and indicated that they were already running tools from either one or both sides of the house was very impressive. Of course, we are not resting on our laurels: Today marks the official release of version 6 of Network Security, our leading exit point solution. While talking to expo attendees, it was also fun to discover when they were running just one of the PowerTech tools and to introduce them to another one of the modules.

I also enjoyed presenting three educational sessions on security topics to COMMON attendees:

• 7 Habits of Highly Secure Organizations

• State of IBM i Security Study 2010

• How To Prevent a Data Leak on IBM i

There were over 1000 attendees at this year’s event; up significantly from last year’s event in Reno, Nevada. As an exhibitor, this was quite noticeable from the foot traffic passing through the expo. Next year’s event in Minneapolis, MN will (hopefully) provide IBM with a great opportunity to represent the platform with resources from Rochester, MN. All of the Help/Systems companies will have a strong presence there, as always.

As I mentioned, Network Security’s new release began shipping this week. To celebrate, I will try to scoop an interview with Jill Martin, PowerTech’s product support manager, to tell us a little about the process of getting a product release out of the door, as well as some of the background on what is new and improved. Watch for that next week…

Last but not least, congratulations to Chris Smith of Wells Fargo, lucky winner of our Windows 7 Netbook giveaway last week.

Cheers!

- rt

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 at 10:15 am and is filed under Company News, Other, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.