Johannesburg, 06 Nov 2009
COMMON is the world's largest community of IBM users on the Power Systems Platform. This group promotes advocacy and skills transfer. COMMON will be launched in South Africa on 10 November at the IBM Auditorium, in Sandton.
“COMMON is a community of IBM users within various industries that is totally independent and is able to provide skills transfer by sharing knowledge around core solutions, while informing IBM about their clients' needs,” says Marinus van Sandwyk, Founder and CTO of Tembo Technologies.
“IBM truly believes in COMMON because great things can be achieved through advocacy and teamwork,” says Cally Beck, Power Systems Academic Initiative Programme Manager, Northeast British Indian Ocean Territory and Central Eastern Europe Middle East and Africa.
“Now is the perfect time to launch COMMON in South Africa to enhance skills development and provide benefits to all in the IBM Power Systems community. I have been involved in COMMON activities for a number of years and have seen firsthand the benefits it affords to all its members in networking, sharing knowledge, best practice and innovative ideas,” says Beck.
COMMON board member (North America) and a recognised international motivational speaker, Trevor Perry, who is currently one of the top five most influential people in application organisation, will also be attending and presenting at the launch.
“The user group offers great value to businesses by enabling any person using an IBM Power System to have access to others in the community. This access can help them gain even better benefits from using the system,” says Van Sandwyk.
Tembo Technologies partnered with Edgetec Systems to bring COMMON into South Africa on a transfer of ownership basis. Once the initiative is up and running, both companies will hand ownership to COMMON in order to maintain its standards of advocacy and independence.
“Ideally, we want individual membership of COMMON to be free of charge in order encourage membership. As a section 21 company, COMMON will not be profit driven and instead will keep its core focus on the community it serves,” says Van Sandwyk.
“Edgetec believes in the opportunities COMMON presents to the community. As an IBM Business Partner, we felt that bringing this community initiative to our customer and supplier base, would see all those interested in the IBM Power System being able to benefit,” says Dan Naidoo CEO, Edgetec Systems.
“We believe that COMMON is an additional way for IBM to keep in tune with its clients and allows the company to refine and develop solutions that are focused on providing relevant improvements that have a broad appeal to business,” says Van Sandwyk.
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