July 26 — This past spring Jason Anderson, high-performance computing systems administrator for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), was elected president of the Large Tape Users Group (LTUG), a branch of the Independent Oracle Users Group that serves as the voice for users of Oracle products and technologies.

Oracle currently manufactures and sells StorageTek magnetic tape products for the long-term data storage needs of large data centers such as the OLCF, a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility located at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). LTUG gives Oracle users with big tape installations a way to interact within the Oracle community, provide feedback about products, and discuss technical issues.

While staff at ORNL have been involved with LTUG for the past 5 years, Anderson said he felt a responsibility to nurture the community and contribute further. Anderson accepted the presidential position this past spring following LTUG’s annual conference, a major forum for user discussion and information about StorageTek products.

Anderson said his position as president and the active participation of other staff members will give ORNL a voice early in product development. “We already partner with Oracle to help them test new firmware, which can potentially help find bugs that might have caused production issues down the road. The fact that we hold active roles in the user group both improves the company’s product and further solidifies our partnership,” he said.

As president, Anderson will help plan and organize LTUG’s annual spring conference. During the conference, Oracle shares roadmaps, provides information about new products, and gathers feedback from the user community. The event also allows user facilities like the OLCF to give presentations and talk about how they are leveraging Oracle’s products.

The unique aspect of the event, Anderson says, is the “Meet the Engineers” night during which users have the chance to meet and discuss products with the people who are making them. “We get to interface with the guys behind the curtain, the people who are actually engineering the product,” he said. “That is one of the reasons we’re excited about being even more involved with this group.”

Until the conference starts, Anderson will perform administrative duties and participate in monthly meetings, where he will facilitate discussion about outstanding issues or changes related to the group and its users.

Anderson is serving a 2-year term until the next elections in the spring of 2018.

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Source: Rachel Harken, OLCF