This weekend, I had the opportunity to take a road trip to Iowa to attend a tailgate party and watch the ISU Cyclones get clobbered by Oklahoma State University. Cargill, one of the largest private companies in the USA, owns multiple licenses of DBU database utility, and hosted the Cyclone tent. While the game was less than exciting, the atmosphere was awesome and the crowd was more than happy to be there no matter what the score. But the best part of my trip was hitting the open roads of Iowa and observing all the ties ProData & DBU has even on the back roads of what many consider ‘the boonies’, Iowa.
Right when I crossed the Nebraska-Iowa border, I looked out and saw the industrial park where my neighbor works, Warren Distribution. They have been a long-time ProData customer…and not just because the CIO is my neighbor! I thought of our long relationship with them, just as I passed an Estes Express truck, another DBU customer. I thought ‘how cool is that?’ as I was passing the Werner Distribution truck. Yet another customer. I better slow down!
IBM i has it’s footprint in all kinds of industries with hundreds of Independent Software Vendors writing some great software for industrial, agricultural and trucking firms to run their business. As I continued on Interstate 80, I passed by some big grain bins belonging to Heartland Co-op, another one of our customers. I remembered that our attendance at Agvantage’s agricultural software conference provided that connection as well as the one with Farmer’s Co-op(yes, another customer!), which I just flew past!
Once I hit the ‘farm cities’, like Des Moines, the list of our DBU customers really started to roll by; Wells Fargo in the city, Von Maur at the mall, Earl May Nursery on the outskirts of town. Rolling into Ames, I eyed the National Farmers Organization, who just renewed their DBU license. I stopped for a train and thought of Iowa Interstate Railroad, yet another customer. When I stopped for gas, I saw the Andersen Erickson Dairy truck rolling in with a cart of their goodies. I really wanted to ask for a free drink, since they too, own our product.
I finally got to the game, checked my invite and went directly to Tent # 14 to whoop it up with Cargill and the Clones. It was time to get DBU off the brain! But boy, DBU sure has tagged along to support database access for IBM i developers, even in ‘the boonies’.