The hard to soft Pomeron transition in small x DIS data using optimal renormalization

We show that it is possible to describe the effective Pomeron intercept, determined from the HERA Deep Inelastic Scattering data at small values of Bjorken x, using next-to-leading order BFKL evolution together with collinear improvements. To obtain a good description over the whole range of Q^2 we use a non-Abelian physical renormalization scheme with BLM optimal scale, combined with a parametrization of the running coupling in the infrared region.