Just like every other major player in the IT market (eg, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP), HP has its own user community that is run by actual HP users and practitioners. Membership is free and the community is used mainly for shared learning and networking.

So whether you are an HP software practitioner or whether you are at the other end of the spectrum and are only interested in hardware, this community is the place where everything is happening. From face to face meetings, to webinars, forums, tagging other members and forming virtual relationships, we’ve got it all…

Add to the mix an ever growing community and plenty of discounts available for HP events (such as HP Discover), as well as special deep-dive trainings, and you’ve got a crisp snapshot of what Vivit is all about.

www.vivit-worldwide.org

So what is Vivit actually about?

Vivit, simply put, has started off as a "bunch” of practitioners coming together and talking shop on HP products from a pragmatic and operational viewpoint, backed up by years of experience using these products, in order to offer assistance to less experienced teams and companies, and enriching the overall quality of the community.

The members are doing the work voluntarily and are getting great positive outcomes out of everything.

As an example, here’s a snapshot of VIVIT’s goals for the last year – 2012.

Vivit fortes are the following (as a member, one would be able to tap into the potential of each and every point mentioned below):

ADVOCACY & COMMUNITY – a Vivit member could engage with the HP teams directly, without having to go through partner channels and the long way around. In Vivit, we have access to product managers, HP fellows, evangelist, etc. Connecting with peers and fellow IT professionals (all non HP employees) has given birth to many successful business relationships.

EDUCATION & DISCOUNTS – self-explanatory, people can attend free live rooms/webinars, and as attendance to HP conferences can sometimes be prohibitive from a monetary perspective for one or more individuals, Vivit is offering free passes and discounts to help the people attend these fabulous HP events.

So how does it work?

The way it works is pretty simple: In EMEA, each country has its own chapter (for instance, I lead the chapter for South Africa where we have around 100 members, and we’re all meeting around 2 times a year). The chapters themselves are linked altogether at a global level, so in essence these local groups are only relating to physical/geographic locations/boundaries.

Each chapter organizes their own events, where practitioners get together face to face, at a function, where they can talk shop or simply network. Since Vivit is supported by HP marketing, these functions are free, but they are only available to Vivit members.

Otherwise, members can just simply attend online events organized by the different special interest groups within Vivit.

What groups do we have?

For HP Practitioners, we’ve got:

• Business Service Management

• Configuration Management System

• Data Center Automation

• HP Service Management

• Network Automation

• Project & Portfolio Management Forum

• Testing, Quality, ALM

• TRIM

For decision makers, we’ve got:

• Agile

• Business Intelligence

• Cloud Builders

• DevOps

• Mobility

• Security & Privacy- New

• Big Data - New

So who does actually attend these "things” and what does the member base look like?

Well, see for yourself below. Our presence is mostly in the US and Europe, but rapidly expanding in Africa, Asia and India. We’re now over 14k members worldwide (stats as of end of 2012).

What are the demographics on these 14k members?

We’re looking at ~40% decision makers, ~40% operational end users, while ~20% are unknown.

Also, out of the total number of members, >60% have used HP software for more than 5 years…

So does it actually work out for the members or is it just a lot of talking?

ABSOLUTELY YES! – it works brilliantly…

For example, our few last webinars attracted between 150-200 people per webinar! And it looks like the people want more. The people we’ve connected through our network have engaged in long-term relationships and are now doing business together. We’ve saved others time and money by simply pointing them to the right people in HP at the right time, etc.

See the community calendar.

So, I’m an Accenture employee, is it really worth it joining the HP community?

Absolutely! One gets to meet peers and exchange information, exactly in the same manner we would on our Accenture Community of Practices (CoPs). Only that Vivit is global and only with an interest in HP products. So in other words, if you don’t get an answer from the CoP, or from HP, you would definitely find what you’re looking for in the Vivit community.

As 2012 grew to an end, we realized (as the trend showed us) that people were more inclined to attend online events than anything else, so we will pursue this model for 2013 and offer a great deal of interesting webinars, so join the Vivit community and make the most of our webinars!

Also, during the HP Discover events, we managed to get ~150 people registered to free deep dive training sessions offered by different HP and Vivit partners, as well as our own customer driven round table discussion.

Another record in registrations which simply confirms that in the ever changing world of IT, the hunger for information is out there. Vivit is just a means to quench that thirst, so join us, we’ll be glad to have you around and learn from each other.