Raul F. Chong

Raul F. Chong is a Senior DB2, Big Data and Cloud Program Manager and Technical Evangelist based at the IBM Canada Laboratory. He leads the development and design of several offerings for the Information Management (IM) brand of IBM, with the goal of increasing awareness and growing communities around IBM IM products, such as IBM InfoSphere BigInsights, IBM InfoSphere Streams, DB2 database software, IBM Data Studio, InfoSphere Data Architect, and pureQuery technology. As part of the IM Cloud Computing Center of Competence at the Toronto Lab, Raul leads the development and deployment of projects by the community using DB2 on the Cloud, such as bigdatauniversity.com and db2oncampus.org. As a technical evangelist, Raul travels worldwide delivering presentations and workshops targeting customers, IBM business partners, and the Academia. Raul develops and leads the development of collateral material such as articles, books, videos, courses, and DVDs that help educate users in IBM IM products. He has also participated actively in the development of training material and offerings of IBM IM Certification programs. Raul joined IBM in 1997 and has worked as a DB2 consultant, DB2 technical support specialist, and DB2 Information Developer. Raul has summarized many of his DB2 experiences through the years in the first and second editions of the book Understanding DB2—Learning Visually with Examples for which he is the lead author. He has also co-authored the book DB2 SQL PL Essential Guide for DB2 UDB on Linux, UNIX, Windows, i5/OS, and z/OS (ISBN 0131477005), and other books that are part of the DB2 on Campus book series. In his spare time, Raul enjoys playing with his two little daughters. Raul is fluent in Spanish as he was born and raised in Peru, but he keeps some of the Chinese traditions from his grandparents. He also enjoys reading history and archeology books.

Clara Liu was recently appointed to be the Program Manager of IBM Cross Brand Technical Initiatives. She manages leading edge strategic projects across IBM brands. Her prior management role was with the DB2 Planning team. Her previous consulting experience gave her an insight and solid understanding of customers’ needs. Based on market demand, competition pressure, and objectives of maximizing return of investment, she drives software enhancements into the product with the right balance between leading edge technology and business needs. In many DB2, Warehouse, PureData Systems versions and releases, Clara held key responsibilities such as planning product enhancements, managing product offer portfolio and license entitlement, making software available on fulfillment systems for customers, and planning for smooth migration paths for customers when products reach end of life. Over the years, she delivered many product hands-on and video demonstrations with her team. Those are great assets for the IBM Sales and Marketing team and customers who want to ‘see’ and ‘play’ with the technologies. Due to the board involvement in numerous phases of the database product life cycle, Clara has established great networking within the development organization as well as across the business teams. As a mother of two, Clara had coauthored five books (including this one), all focusing in her technical expertise, DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows.