Happy New Year to all!

As the incoming Chairman for BITUG in 2019, I thought I would get in early and wish you all a very Happy New Year, health and happiness for 2019.

I’d firstly like to thank Damian for all his hard work as Chairman last year and I hope I can continue the momentum and enthusiasm that he put in. It’s also a time on behalf of committee to say thank you and goodbye for now to Dave Ross and Dan Lewis too. As long-time committee members, due to other commitments and ventures they have decided to leave the committee. All the best, both.

To boost the team, we welcomed two new committee members at end of last year– David Worrall from HSBC and John Bycroft from comforte. Please join me in welcoming them again.

If you are interested in joining the BITUG Committee, please get in contact with us via website or my email below.

BITUG is a non-profit user group – one of the largest NonStop user groups worldwide – brought to you by a very dedicated committee made up of users and vendors like yourselves. Without the support of you the users, the vendor community (our sponsors) and of course HPE we could not exist. Thank you all.

The NonStop product family has changed over the past few years and I firmly believe it’s never been in a better place – with huge opportunities to expand into new markets and as a long-term ‘Tandem-ite’ (old NonStoppers for you young’uns) I am very excited for the future. It’s great to hear (and meet) new NonStoppers and with the likes of the new NonStop Under-40’s group presided over presently by Daniel Craig am sure that enthusiasm will continue long after us ‘oldies’ retire! (www.nsu40.com)

Of course, with all this change in the NonStop world taking place, that’s where user groups like ourselves come into their own. To help deliver the latest news and bring users and vendors together in one place.

This year I am very excited as BITUG will be hosting another eBITUG conference. The eBITUG 2019 NonStop Symposium will be the largest NonStop event held in Europe this year. It will be held in my (near) current home town, the city of Edinburgh in UK from May 13th to May 15th. A full 2-2.5-day agenda of presentations, networking, and latest HPE News, not to mention fun and frivolity Scottish-style is to be had by all. We expect upwards of 200+ users, vendors and HPE folks to attend and we hope that we see you there too. While our vendor sponsors cover most of the cost, as in case of eBITUG 2017 there will be a nominal attendee fee. We expect to keep attendee fee at same rate as in 2017. Registration, agenda, accommodation details etc., will be distributed shortly. Keep an eye out in your email inbox as well as on the BITUG website (www.bitug.com) under ’events’. Registration will be open soon.

We’ll also deliver a Little SIG, single-day event as usual in London in December. We’ll announce the date, agenda, location etc. in due course.

I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you all that membership to BITUG is FREE for NonStop users and very reasonably priced for organisations and vendors. If you know someone involved in NonStop and not yet a member, please do get them to join by going to our website join link: https://www.bitug.com/join/.

We welcome members from all over the world and all members will receive at least 2 x Newsletters full of NonStop news from HPE and vendors each year, free attendance to BIG SIG and Little SIG’s as well as other announcements and freebies.

We also welcome any and all feedback, ideas, suggestions etc., anything which you think will benefit the NonStop community. Please feel free to drop me a line at collin.yates @ bitug.com at any time.

So without further ado, on behalf of myself and the committee, we hope to see as many of you as possible at our eBITUG NonStop Symposium in May.

Many thanks,

Collin Yates

BITUG Chairman 2019 and Technical Director, TCM

Email: collin.yates @ bitug.com

British Isles Tandem User Group