2012 Speaker List

Are the days of buying separate server, storage and networking components coming to an end? Systems architectures are being re-invented, with network and storage resources becoming integrated into the same package so that they can be managed together more efficiently. Two years on from the first product launches, the concept of system convergence is starting to catch on with real customers, especially service providers offering Cloud-based services and enterprises implementing private Clouds. It’s a good time to assess how things are panning out and what course they are likely to take over the next 12 to 18 months.

Is converged infrastructure right for you? Come hear from 451 Group analysts and leading converged infrastructure vendors in this panel to better understand the converged infrastructure phenomenon, drill into the taxonomy, and talk real-world deployments of various approaches to assess what makes sense for your organization. We'll discuss approaches from vendors (panel suggestions: - Cisco, VCE, Netapp, HP and start-up Nutanix), across different use cases and organization sizes with technical leaders from these vendors in an interactive panel-style discussion.

New software offers enterprises the ability to monitor social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, to stay on top of public perceptions and mentions of their brands. Increasingly, enterprises want to integrate these social sites with their customer contact operations; they’d also like to be able use social networking sites as direct channels of communications into the contact center. In this session, we’ll examine how much progress is really being made toward this integration of social networks with enterprise customer contact. We’ll discuss what’s available to effect the integration of the systems, and what you can do with the information once it begins flowing into the customer care operation. You’ll come away with the essentials that will help you make customer contact via social networks a reality, and one that integrates seamlessly with your existing contact center operation.

Huge revenue, customer acquisition and retention, and brand credibility implications are riding on the ability of Service Providers to leverage their data center and IP infrastructure to deliver profitable network-based IT services. The Carrier Cloud Forum will provide high-quality education and peer-to-peer interaction on building a cloud infrastructure that is manageable and billable, ensuring high-performance security and service quality to meet SLA demands, recognizing best practices for packaging and monetizing XaaS services and applications, and learning what works and what does not for vertical industry customization.

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As enterprises embrace the new world of consumer tablets, smartphones and laptops, “Bring Your Own Device” policies enable employees and guests to be more mobile and productive. But what are the real costs and challenges brought on by BYOD? We’ll review impacts on WLAN bandwidth, security, access, and overall user experience in this session.

Despite the hype, enterprises are still wrapping their arms around the large amounts of data they’re sitting on, and how to leverage it. In this session, we’ll look at a snapshot of how enterprises are thinking about their big data strategies, how CIOs are enabling this strategy, and what it means to their top line.

Started in July 2010, the OpenStack cloud computing platform has achieved what it set out to: provide a legitimate third cloud ecosystem to balance AWS and VMware. More than 130 companies have joined the movement (as of October 2011), including an impressive list of heavyweights and venture-funded startups. The movement’s pace of expansion, release cycles, and project launches suggests that the market has embraced OpenStack as a fully legitimate participant in cloud’s transformation of the IT landscape.

In just a little over a year, OpenStack has become the fastest growing open source platform ever and the hype matches its speed of growth. With the OpenStack community made up of public cloud, hosted private cloud and private cloud providers, one is left to wonder what it truly means to be OpenStack? In this interactive, moderated discussion, panelists will provide their perspective on this question, while debating the merits of various cloud computing models in order to help answer the question of “how open is too open?”

One of the key underlying concepts of a software defined network (SDN) is that the switch control plane is decoupled from the data plane and placed in a separate centralized server or controller. This centralization of the control plane makes it relatively easy to programmatically control the entire network. OpenFlow is an open API/protocol that is used between a network controller and a controlled physical switch that provides the forwarding hardware.

As corporations continue to struggle over the decision to ban or allow unrestricted access to social media, the medium continues to build momentum as a modern business tool. Further, employees are increasingly mobile, accessing social applications from their own devices on the corporate network. It’s a runaway train, so businesses are on the hook to enable social media in a way that balances security and privacy concerns with productivity and business enablement. The key to the right social media policy is to understand the usage patterns and the business case, as well as the risks, and weight these appropriately to make the best decision for the business and its employees.

Session attendees will learn more about the pitfalls and opportunities presented by social media, and how to determine what type of social media policy is appropriate for their business. We will share ways to proactively manage the corporate network to protect against these threats, discuss how to train employees to recognize malware threats in social mediums and how to mitigate the fallout from a social media attack.

Virtualization and private cloud have enabled server consolidation, created more flexible environments, and saved companies a ton of money. In fact, a survey of 1200 companies with more than 500 employees showed that 56 percent had server virtualization in production or pilot. But based on a decade of experience with large enterprise users of virtualization, this presentation covers the types of situations when you should consider not virtualizing some of your applications for reasons ranging from technical to legal and highlight security considerations that should be addressed when adopting and utilizing virtualization.

With cost control, competitive advantage, and the very success of any organization now dependent upon mobile communications, the unification of landlines, cellular, Wi-Fi, voice mail, and more into a single manageable resource is taking on new importance and offering benefits that go straight to the bottom line. This session will look at the current state of mobile UC, discuss how mobile UC can be implemented in enterprise settings, and explore the evolution of what is rapidly becoming a vital IT resource.

The “Mobility Revolution” is having an impact on most businesses. Employees want to use their own mobile devices to access email and calendar at the least, and possibly use mobile interfaces for the organization’s applications and data. HDI research shows that most organizations do not have fully developed policies for mobile device support, and as a consequence are struggling to keep up with the pace of change in mobile devices. This session will highlight strategies and tactics for good mobile device support policies that make sense for business and for employees, with an eye to protecting proprietary data and ensuring regulatory compliance. Based largely on HDI’s own research and Roy Atkinson’s HDI white papers “The Mobility Revolution and Its Consequences for Support” (2011) and “The Mobility Revolution, Redux: Continued Change and Challenge” (2012).

Today’s effective network security is made up of two complementary components: first, inspecting every packet of all traffic on all ports and protocols with a level of scrutiny provided only by DPI and, second, allocating bandwidth for business-critical applications while limiting wasteful or potentially harmful applications. Organizations are switching to Next-Generation Firewalls, which combine traditional stateful packet firewall features with the increased security of deep inspection to deliver intrusion prevention and application control. This session will demonstrate how switching to a high-performance Next-Generation Firewall is necessary to achieve granular security policies and increased employee productivity.

Huge revenue, customer acquisition and retention, and brand credibility implications are riding on the ability of Service Providers to leverage their data center and IP infrastructure to deliver profitable network-based IT services. The Carrier Cloud Forum will provide high-quality education and peer-to-peer interaction on building a cloud infrastructure that is manageable and billable, ensuring high-performance security and service quality to meet SLA demands, recognizing best practices for packaging and monetizing XaaS services and applications, and learning what works and what does not for vertical industry customization.

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Both public and private clouds are now at the center of contemporary IT strategy and thinking, and the cloud fits nicely into a modern mobility strategy – if it’s properly implemented, that is. And, even where local apps are the solution of choice, much of the data for those apps will reside in the cloud. This session will provide real-world advice on applying cloud-based IT techniques, as well as virtualization, to storage, applications, collaboration and more.

Increasingly, voice and video communications can be embedded in applications that enterprise users work in throughout the day. This may consist of a plug-in or a presence indicator, from which the user can find and connect with those in their enterprise directory—and potentially even those outside the enterprise (where the two entities’ systems are federated). But are vendors really delivering on the potential of these “Communications Enabled Business Processes” (CEBP), and are enterprises ready to implement such integrations? In this session, you’ll learn how communications systems can be integrated with business applications; what the potential benefits of doing so might be for your enterprise; and how to go about implementing the integration. You’ll learn what it will take to transform this capability from a “nice to have” into a business-critical integration, and how to support these systems once they’re integrated.

The world has changed and technology leadership must change with it. Gone are the days where being a plumber, a mechanic, a project manager, a digital baby sitter for a less-than-tech-savvy senior management team, or a janitor for data messes is enough. The emergent technology leader is an entrepreneur; an innovator; a data scientist; a change agent; an educator; and a diplomat. A new day of technology leadership is upon us. Join the pioneers who are defining the new standard of leadership excellence.

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The world has changed and technology leadership must change with it. Gone are the days where being a plumber, a mechanic, a project manager, a digital baby sitter for a less-than-tech-savvy senior management team, or a janitor for data messes is enough. The emergent technology leader is an entrepreneur; an innovator; a data scientist; a change agent; an educator; and a diplomat. A new day of technology leadership is upon us. Join the pioneers who are defining the new standard of leadership excellence.

Click here for more information

The increased adoption of cloud-based services is contributing to a dramatic rise in inter-data center traffic. The related escalation of WAN costs, combined with the emergence of carrier-grade Ethernet, is leading a growing number of data center operators to deploy their own Ethernet-based data center interconnect (DCI) networks. This panel session provides a real-world overview of the business and operational challenges associated with deploying high-performance Ethernet-based DCI networks, as well as the new technology solutions that allow data center operators to scale capacity with greater efficiency while providing the visibility and control required to meet enterprise customer’s SLAs.

The topic of DCI is growing in importance for data center operators of all types and sizes. Attendees of this panel session will gain a better understanding of the challenges associated with designing and operating Ethernet-based DCI networks, as well as the advantages in terms of business flexibility, control and scale. The session will be approached from an educational perspective, with participation from a leading industry analyst, a top-tier data center operator and a technology vendor to provide a balanced, real-world view. This content will be relevant to data center strategic planners and architects, and business planners and managers.

New software offers enterprises the ability to monitor social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, to stay on top of public perceptions and mentions of their brands. Increasingly, enterprises want to integrate these social sites with their customer contact operations; they’d also like to be able use social networking sites as direct channels of communications into the contact center. In this session, we’ll examine how much progress is really being made toward this integration of social networks with enterprise customer contact. We’ll discuss what’s available to effect the integration of the systems, and what you can do with the information once it begins flowing into the customer care operation. You’ll come away with the essentials that will help you make customer contact via social networks a reality, and one that integrates seamlessly with your existing contact center operation.

Ask ten people what “Big Data” means and you’ll likely get ten different answers. Yes volume and velocity matter, but ultimately it’s the integration of a variety of data that drives Big Data business value. For enterprises, IT practitioners and architects, it is important to understand the platforms available to handle the many flavors of Big Data and how they can work together. In this session we’ll explore the technologies and methodologies applicable to the many flavors of Big Data.

Mobility Analyst Kevin Benedict will start by updating the audience on the latest enterprise mobility trends, survey results, research and analyst projections. He will then share perspectives from many different enterprise mobility experts and identify some of the biggest challenges in mobility today. He will follow by identifying successful enterprise mobility strategies, and provide recommendations for managing a real time enterprise.

This session will discuss the disruptive forces that Channel organizations are facing today, and how visibility will be a critical element in preserving the "trusted advisor" role that these organizations fill for their customers. Key disrupters that will be discussed include Cloud, Mobility, and BYOD.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

A peer-led session designed to discuss the challenges, solutions, best practices and emerging business models around cloud integration. This executive peer-led session will explore how today’s leading IT integrators providers are building best of breed cloud solutions for their customers by piecing together the right infrastructure building blocks, virtualizing servers and storage platforms and layering on top of that the right mix of application and integration services. This forum will address the solutions available from today’s leading hardware, software and service providers and how those disparate technologies make up only a small piece of the overall cloud solution. So the only way today’s solution providers can differentiate themselves is by investing in cloud integration services. Some would argue that such an investment is guarantee for future success while hesitation or procrastination could result in disaster. This forum will bring together executives who want to learn from one another, understand the ecosystem, players and cloud integration best practices and services you need to succeed.

With the clear emphasis on apps and Web/cloud services now emerging, does a specific mobile operating system still matter? What are the key differentiators between today’s mobile OS leaders? Does a specific choice of operating system have any real impact on overall enterprise IT efficiency, cost, or success? This session will answer the platform question via detailed analysis and debate.

The cellular handset has evolved from voice-centric beginnings to do-it-all mobile powerhouse capable of replacing many other devices. This session will explore what’s next for this vital tool: are we seeing convergence to the PDA form factor, or will alternatives see a resurgence? Will voice technology become the preferred user input methodology? How will advances in basic technologies, including power sources, processors, and local storage, continue to increase the value and utility of the handset?

Successful mobile operations include demands beyond a personal-liability policy and even another key requirement, mobile device management. The complete solution, often called Enterprise Mobility Management, includes policy, expense, and applications management solutions, as well as integration with other operational IT systems. This session will examine the requirements and help define a strategy to ensure mobile success.

With the clear emphasis on apps and Web/cloud services now emerging, does a specific mobile operating system still matter? What are the key differentiators between today’s mobile OS leaders? Does a specific choice of operating system have any real impact on overall enterprise IT efficiency, cost, or success? This session will answer the platform question via detailed analysis and debate.

With the clear emphasis on apps and Web/cloud services now emerging, does a specific mobile operating system still matter? What are the key differentiators between today’s mobile OS leaders? Does a specific choice of operating system have any real impact on overall enterprise IT efficiency, cost, or success? This session will answer the platform question via detailed analysis and debate.

Virtualization has been the single largest driver in data center change over the past three years. Network fabric technology and software-defined networking are rapidly replacing the decade-old tiered network architectures. As advanced targeted attacks are becoming more prolific and cheaper to engineer, network security technologies must evolve to deal with invisible wires, non-deterministic network paths, and increasingly complex attack techniques. How can you keep up with the ever-expanding threat?

The proliferation of mobile devices and tablets is changing the IT landscape. It’s time to hear how users are managing this complex environment. Join us in conversation with customers for insights in setting policies, kinds of access being granted, user expectations and management. This special customer panel will discuss how they are effectively managing the flurry of mobile devices and tablets in their networks.

For well over a decade most IT infrastructures have relied on physical appliances including physical routers, WAN optimization controllers (WOCs) and application delivery controllers (ADCs). However, over the last few years, an increasing number of virtualized appliances have entered the marketplace. These appliances have the potential to provide dramatically lower cost and dramatically increase agility. That raises the question: Is there any longer a need for physical appliances? The panelists on this session will take opposing views on this question and will provide you the information you need to determine what makes the most sense in your environment.

There is growing pressure on IT organizations to support the movement of large files between data centers, to improve the performance of web-based applications, to support mobile workers and initiatives such as desktop virtualization. Venture capitalists and others have been funding significant investments in a wide range of optimization technologies and services to respond to these requirements. The panelists in this session will discuss some of the most promising new developments relative to optimizing network and application performance.

Let's not forget that strategies like cloud computing, agile processes, and devops still run on servers, storage, and networking. Many cloud, agile, and devops proponents try to commoditize and minimize the value of underlying hardware, the fact someone still as to build and manage the infrastructure that enable faster, better, and more simpler IT. The technologies that will be used in data centers in the next 12 to 18 months are going to be significantly impacted by what you decide today. New technologies in servers, storage, and networking can have a positive impact regardless of your strategic initiatives. In this panel, we’ll discuss what is on the horizon in data center technologies and how you can leverage them. Bring your questions.

The definition of the “desktop” is changing. The workforce is increasingly mobile, and there is a plethora of choices – tablets, smartphones, thin/zero clients, client hypervisors, virtual desktops, hosted applications, cloud-based services – available now with even more options coming. The term 'desktop' is becoming a metaphor for the collective devices, applications, services and content to which users subscribe both within the enterprise and in the cloud. Hear our roundtable of industry visionaries discuss the desktop of the future and the future of the desktop, and how you should prepare your infrastructure for what's next.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about assuring the user experience. While many vendors claim an ability to monitor and report on user experience, the question is what vantage point provides the most relevant view into what a user is actually experiencing? Does looking at synthetic transactions that are meant to replicate a user transaction provide such a view? Or does looking at how applications perform across multiple tiers within the data center represent a user experience perspective. The panelists on this session will take opposing views on the question of how best to assure the user experience and will provide you the information you need to determine what makes the most sense in your environment.

Major software platform vendors have invested heavily in extending their enterprise footprints into the realm of collaboration and social computing. Microsoft SharePoint, IBM Connections, Cisco Quad, and Oracle WebCenter all represent attempts by those vendors to provide a broad suite of modern, "Enterprise 2.0" services within a single stack. Yet, these platforms differ significantly in scope, functionality, maturity, and cost. And while these stacks bring obvious integration benefits, business stakeholders have raised serious concerns about their functional inadequacies. Join a leading independent analyst from the Real Story Group in a vendor-neutral critique of the leading players, as well as an examination of the pros and cons of alternative solutions in the social and collaboration software marketplace.

This fast-paced workshop will share customer research from noted evaluation firm Real Story Group (formerly CMS Watch) on leading social software platforms, and provide a framework for customers to assess technology choices based on their particular needs. Specifically, the session will provide a methodology for mapping business needs to technology alternatives, as well as a roadmap for evaluating social and collaboration technology vendors.

This intensive workshop offers a critical, independent evaluation of SharePoint, detailing the platform's strengths and weaknesses culled from customer experiences and hands-on testing. Through presentations and discussion, the workshop helps you figure out how, where, when, and why to use SharePoint -- and reviews how well SharePoint "fits" into different types and sizes of enterprises with different business objectives.

A peer-led session designed to discuss the challenges, solutions, best practices and emerging business models around cloud integration. This executive peer-led session will explore how today’s leading IT integrators providers are building best of breed cloud solutions for their customers by piecing together the right infrastructure building blocks, virtualizing servers and storage platforms and layering on top of that the right mix of application and integration services. This forum will address the solutions available from today’s leading hardware, software and service providers and how those disparate technologies make up only a small piece of the overall cloud solution. So the only way today’s solution providers can differentiate themselves is by investing in cloud integration services. Some would argue that such an investment is guarantee for future success while hesitation or procrastination could result in disaster. This forum will bring together executives who want to learn from one another, understand the ecosystem, players and cloud integration best practices and services you need to succeed.

Every year, humanity generates more information than before. We're only now learning how to harness it, putting powerful new processing architectures to work to glean insights from the petabytes of data we have on customers, markets, competitors, and employees. For IT this means two things: a new role as the go-to analyst in charge of crunching this information, and a new set of architectures that can store and crunch all of the information while staying within the law.

Click here for more information

Not all big data applications are the same, and neither are their infrastructure requirements around storage or performance. This session will highlight the requirements of real-time big data applications and will discuss the viability of executing them within today's cloud. Special focus will be paid to overcoming the issues of scale, managing multi-tenant performance, and rapid real-time deployment.

Are the days of buying separate server, storage and networking components coming to an end? Systems architectures are being re-invented, with network and storage resources becoming integrated into the same package so that they can be managed together more efficiently. Two years on from the first product launches, the concept of system convergence is starting to catch on with real customers, especially service providers offering Cloud-based services and enterprises implementing private Clouds. It’s a good time to assess how things are panning out and what course they are likely to take over the next 12 to 18 months.

Is converged infrastructure right for you? Come hear from 451 Group analysts and leading converged infrastructure vendors in this panel to better understand the converged infrastructure phenomenon, drill into the taxonomy, and talk real-world deployments of various approaches to assess what makes sense for your organization. We'll discuss approaches from vendors (panel suggestions: - Cisco, VCE, Netapp, HP and start-up Nutanix), across different use cases and organization sizes with technical leaders from these vendors in an interactive panel-style discussion.

This session will discuss the opportunity in cloud and data center with Extreme Networks; what the company is doing to win and most importantly, how partners can capitalize on their new solutions, and customer / market momentum in the industry. The session will include an interactive discussion around trends with data center networking and how partners can best capitalize on those trends to win.

This will be a brief presentation about how X.commerce (an eBay company) is building a hybrid data management infrastructure as part of our cloud-based commerce platform. X.commerce is being run as a startup within eBay, with the goal of revolutionizing commerce by not only delivering services to merchants, but also by providing a vehicle for developers to bring in innovations to market faster and with broader reach. To meet this goal, we must simultaneously solve for the needs of workloads ranging from transactional to low latency analytics to historical warehousing. We'll talk about how the private cloud solution we're building is leveraging OpenStack, Cloud Foundry, Hadoop, HBase, MongoDB and other open source technologies.

Every year, humanity generates more information than before. We're only now learning how to harness it, putting powerful new processing architectures to work to glean insights from the petabytes of data we have on customers, markets, competitors, and employees. For IT this means two things: a new role as the go-to analyst in charge of crunching this information, and a new set of architectures that can store and crunch all of the information while staying within the law.

Click here for more information

Learn how Dell’s new OpenManage 5.0 can simplify the management of the entire line of Dell networking products. The session covers a series of common networking management challenges including:

• Analyzing the Traffic Patterns and Layout of your Network
• Managing Automated Upgrades
• Locating Bottlenecks
• Tracking and Identifying Excessive Data Users

Each scenario will feature a live demonstration of how each challenge can be solved through the use of Dell OpenManage Network Manager 5.0.

Cloud’s Silver Screen Debut: How HP & DreamWorks Animation Brought Cloud Computing to the Red Carpet

To date cloud networking discussions have focused mainly on how to solve the problems of scale and virtualization in the data center. There has been little conversation about how services are accessed or consumed from the Cloud. How can customers focus less on managing the network infrastructure and more on connecting users to applications? How can they use standards-based technology to simplify the network and lower the total cost of ownership? How can they deliver new services on-the-fly while guaranteeing service levels required for cloud computing?

DreamWorks Animation will partner on stage with HP to share their compelling case study of leveraging HP and the Cloud to revolutionize the way they collaborate across multiple geographies to produce massive compute-intensive animated films such as Puss in Boots, Kung Fu Panda 2 and Madagascar 3.

Much of the hype about cloud computing focuses on how clouds can avoid up-front costs and how cloud efficiencies can reduce computing costs overall. But how does this apply to private clouds? In this panel, we’ll discuss the realities of private cloud computing from a business perspective, including ROI and real life business case scenarios and whether/how private cloud computing can be cost effective for you.

Winning in Asia: Intelligent ICT On-Demand, On-the-Move

The dynamic and competitive global business environment calls for successful enterprises today to constantly improve their productivity & profitability, increase business agility and to innovate constantly while reducing costs. The surge in growth opportunities in Asia propelled enterprises to extend their business footprints to the region. Bill Chang, EVP, SingTel Business Group, will share insights on the convergence of IT and telecommunications technologies that changes the business landscape. He will deep-dive on how Intelligent Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) improve business outcomes, opening up new possibilities of achieving sustainable growth and scalable business operations to win in Asia. He will share success stories of customers who have embraced Intelligent ICT services to power their business on-demand, on-the-move.

There are plenty of PBXs out there, but as a concept, the PBX—i.e., the voice-only switch—is dead. Emerging in its place is the concept of session management: A middleware platform that, like the PBX, centralizes and manages the establishment of communications among end users—but that, unlike the PBX, handles all media (voice, video and data), serving any endpoint and any application that the user might be on. The heart of Session Management is the SIP protocol, but SIP is being implemented in different ways by different vendors, complicating any enterprise’s attempt to unify its session management around a single middleware platform. In this breakout, you’ll learn how session management works, how (and whether) to migrate from PBXs to session management middleware, and how your decisions around session management limit or open up your options for empowering end user collaboration.

The consolidation of applications and servers out of branch offices and into centralized data centers has driven an increased amount of delay sensitive traffic over the WAN. Now the WAN is being challenged to support the adoption of desktop virtualization, the dynamic movement of VMs and to enable both SaaS and IaaS. Unfortunately the WAN does not follow Moore’s law and so it is not experiencing the same type of price reduction as is computing and storage resources. The panelists in this fast-paced session will discuss some of the most promising emerging WAN technologies and services that you can utilize to successfully support emerging requirements.

Moving beyond server consolidation to an agile virtual infrastructure to a private cloud is a top priority for most organizations, but not an easy road. Getting there successfully means addressing a variety of management issues -- automating virtual operations and provisioning; managing performance and capacity; troubleshooting across the virtual and physical infrastructure; lifecycle management; and eventually managing across multiple hypervisors. Hear experiences and best practices on how layering the right management capabilities onto your virtual environment will improve your IT operations and transform your environment into a private cloud.

In May, 2011 a catastrophic tornado tore through Joplin, Missouri. When the winds had died, over $2B in damage had been done.
Tim Conley fights bad weather with technology. As the Mission Support Team Manager for the Missouri Disaster Response System, he's deployed a cloud solution as part of the response to the Joplin tornado. A year after the disaster, he'll show us how his team used cloud systems to mitigate the impact of the storm.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

While it doesn’t receive as much attention in the trade press as does the data center LAN, the campus LAN is also undergoing fundamental change. The drivers of change in the campus network include the requirement to support a significant increase in video traffic, the need to support the movement of virtual machines within the campus data center and the burgeoning movement to bring your own device (BYOD). The panelists in this session will discuss technologies and design options that you can use to redesign your campus LANs.

Who's after you and what they can do matters. As most of us leverage circa 2003 "best practices" for IT Security, 2011's more than a breach-a-week proved we're losing. Our once "best practices" were predicated on an older model of adversary and older models of IT. Our limited data shows we're most attacked where we're least invested. We cannot protect everything, so how do we best focus our defenses in a world where business leaders are tired of security FUD and are driven by compliance as the answer to all their problems? Data supported security intelligence. In this session we'll take an alternative, adversary centric look at the security challenge and see which insights and opportunities reveal themselves. We'll enumerate the emerging of Adversary Classes, their relative skills sets and capabilities, diverse target objective/asset types, and different TTPs (Tools, Techniques, and Procedures) that you can use to develop, process, analyze and communicate data supported information security intelligence.The session will also equip you with less known sources of actionable and credible intelligence to assist in your endeavors. If you know WHO you are facing and WHAT they are capable of, you can focus on WHICH assets they are after, and HOW they go after them.

802.11n isn’t the high water mark for Wi-Fi – it is in reality the starting point for where wireless has become a peer with wired in the enterprise. 802.11ac/11ad represent the next steps, taking enterprise wireless beyond the gigabits per second mark. This session will break down the technology employed by these amendments (wider channels, additional spatial streams, MU-MIMO, higher frequencies …) as well as the impact it will have on future enterprise network infrastructure design. 802.11ac/11ad is not that far off and planning for future implementations starts now.

Successful mobile operations include demands beyond a personal-liability policy and even another key requirement, mobile device management. The complete solution, often called Enterprise Mobility Management, includes policy, expense, and applications management solutions, as well as integration with other operational IT systems. This session will examine the requirements and help define a strategy to ensure mobile success.

When migrating applications to the cloud, one size does not fit all. Some things work better as infrastructure; some as platform; and some can be replaced by SaaS. But what goes where? In this panel discussion, we'll look at how IT should plan for the migration to cloud platforms.

To reap the benefits of cloud computing, IT has to do more than just give its users self-service machines. It needs to build services around key functions like storage, authentication, and messaging. We talk a lot about service-centric IT, but do we really know what it means? In this panel, we'll discuss the services enterprises can offer—both on-premise and off—that get away from server- and machine-centric thinking, and focus on building great businesses.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

Big data means plenty of answers. It's the questions that are scarce. In this session, Bitcurrent's Alistair Croll will explore how companies need to adjust their thinking in a world where the right data—seasoned with good math—trumps domain expertise.

Every year, humanity generates more information than before. We're only now learning how to harness it, putting powerful new processing architectures to work to glean insights from the petabytes of data we have on customers, markets, competitors, and employees. For IT this means two things: a new role as the go-to analyst in charge of crunching this information, and a new set of architectures that can store and crunch all of the information while staying within the law.

Click here for more information

Cloud Computing is a major shift in IT. It's similar to the switch from circuit- to packet-based networking, or from procedural to object-oriented programming, or from mainframes to client-server models. As with those shifts, some IT professionals will thrive -- and others will become obsolete. Clouds rely on a new set of fundamentals: horizontal scaling, sharding, eventually consistent data systems, virtualization, and more. In this two-hour workshop, we'll cover these fundamentals and understand how they combine to give us today's cloud offerings.

Need to get up to cloud speed in a hurry? This fast-paced workshop will give you the foundation you need to understand where utility computing is headed and arm you with the fundamentals of on-demand infrastructure.

We're busy building IT systems to make business more efficient. But the nature of business itself is changing. Fifteen years after the emergence of e-business, we've forgotten what the ""e"" meant: electronic. And those electrons are frictionless, disrupting many of the fundamentals of how we live, learn, work and play.
Join author and analyst Alistair Croll for a wild—and slightly ADD fuelled—ride across a dozen topics, from Descartes to lube, De Bono to Kickstarter, Skrillex to attention, as we look at how business is changing, and what it means to live in a connected, always-on, data-driven world.

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Most CIOs are focused on their "private cloud", but there's another kind of cloud that is shaking the foundations of IT in a much more profound way – the "cloud in your pocket". The cloud in your pocket is the one that runs apps on your smartphone or tablet. Ominously for the enterprise though, employees use new mobile devices for enterprise tasks, resulting in security risk. This talk will look at the infrastructural requirements to deliver both kinds of clouds, and propose a way for IT to adopt cloud computing safely, securely and cost effectively.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

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Performance issues resulting from SaaS usage, which require both the private WAN along with public internet pose new challenges for businesses relying on this application delivery method. This session will cover recent developments that help overcome these performance challenges, and enable businesses to reap the rewards of SaaS.

Server virtualization in the data center is a proven way to reduce the number of physical servers and reduce energy consumption. But is it reasonable or possible to implement your next virtualization phase? Did you realize your full energy savings entitlement? Join us as we discuss the impact virtualization has on a data center’s power and cooling infrastructure including choosing a density strategy, implementing a high density environment, maximizing the efficiency benefit, and anticipating the dynamic data center.

Successful mobile operations include demands beyond a personal-liability policy and even another key requirement, mobile device management. The complete solution, often called Enterprise Mobility Management, includes policy, expense, and applications management solutions, as well as integration with other operational IT systems. This session will examine the requirements and help define a strategy to ensure mobile success.

Our panel of high-level editors and top industry bloggers will reveal how to move beyond Twitter and LinkedIn and have a real impact on the technology landscape. What’s the one guiding principle you must always follow? How do you navigate ethical and FTC considerations? What resources are out there to help you project a professional image? We’ll answer these questions and more.

One of the key underlying concepts of a software defined network (SDN) is that the switch control plane is decoupled from the data plane and placed in a separate centralized server or controller. This centralization of the control plane makes it relatively easy to programmatically control the entire network. OpenFlow is an open API/protocol that is used between a network controller and a controlled physical switch that provides the forwarding hardware.

The proliferation of mobile devices and tablets is changing the IT landscape. It’s time to hear how users are managing this complex environment. Join us in conversation with customers for insights in setting policies, kinds of access being granted, user expectations and management. This special customer panel will discuss how they are effectively managing the flurry of mobile devices and tablets in their networks.

The vast majority of IT organizations are in the process of re-designing their data center LANs. Most likely the best approach for IT organizations to take is a continuation of what they have always done. But what if it isn’t? What if the best approach is something very different? Recently OpenFlow and Software Defined Networks have been getting a lot of attention as providing an alternative approach to network design. The panelists in this session will discuss those techniques. Are they the same thing with different names? What specific problems are solved by these techniques and when will they become mainstream solutions?

Every year, humanity generates more information than before. We're only now learning how to harness it, putting powerful new processing architectures to work to glean insights from the petabytes of data we have on customers, markets, competitors, and employees. For IT this means two things: a new role as the go-to analyst in charge of crunching this information, and a new set of architectures that can store and crunch all of the information while staying within the law.

Click here for more information

It’s ironic with the advent of cloud computing that we are focusing so heavily on centralized infrastructure. The Internet has no “hub”, and in fact, the spirit of the Internet is decentralized, distributed architecture, where global bandwidth, processing power, content and infrastructure are accessible via the largest peer-to-peer network in history. In this session, we will challenge the audience to think about their own infrastructure and big data challenges with a distributed filter, across architecture, processing, data storage, and more. The speaker, a 20 year IT industry veteran, will also discuss the inherent benefits and challenges with a decentralized approach, and what is available today versus a work in progress.

For well over a decade most IT infrastructures have relied on physical appliances including physical routers, WAN optimization controllers (WOCs) and application delivery controllers (ADCs). However, over the last few years, an increasing number of virtualized appliances have entered the marketplace. These appliances have the potential to provide dramatically lower cost and dramatically increase agility. That raises the question: Is there any longer a need for physical appliances? The panelists on this session will take opposing views on this question and will provide you the information you need to determine what makes the most sense in your environment.

With so much of the success of wireless and mobility dependent upon advances in technology, we’re kicking off this year’s event with a roundtable plenary session examining key developments in basic wireless technologies and standards, operational and management systems, mobile devices and operating systems, and mobile applications. Our objective is to frame the discussion for the entire Wireless and Mobility track, and to outline key technology directions for enterprises and other organizations for the next five years.

The definition of the “desktop” is changing. The workforce is increasingly mobile, and there is a plethora of choices – tablets, smartphones, thin/zero clients, client hypervisors, virtual desktops, hosted applications, cloud-based services – available now with even more options coming. The term 'desktop' is becoming a metaphor for the collective devices, applications, services and content to which users subscribe both within the enterprise and in the cloud. Hear our roundtable of industry visionaries discuss the desktop of the future and the future of the desktop, and how you should prepare your infrastructure for what's next.

Wi-Fi has secured its position as the primary, default, and certainly preferred access vehicle for users everywhere. But even with market dominance and an installed base in the billions, industry standards and specifications continue to evolve at a rapid pace. This session will discuss the latest developments in wireless-LAN technology, including gigabit technologies, new frequency bands, advances in public access systems, and new specs from the Wi-Fi Alliance. We’ll also look at how these innovations will appear in enterprise-class systems (and when), and outline an action plan for the next wave of enterprise deployments.

Whereas convergence has become the buzzword defining contemporary IT, mobility is more properly defined by the opposite situation, divergence. An amazing variety of strategies can be applied to implement optimal solutions. This user and applications roundtable session will explore what’s working – and what’s not – in mobility today, with IT managers discussing their experiences and solutions that have proven their value.

Successful mobile operations include demands beyond a personal-liability policy and even another key requirement, mobile device management. The complete solution, often called Enterprise Mobility Management, includes policy, expense, and applications management solutions, as well as integration with other operational IT systems. This session will examine the requirements and help define a strategy to ensure mobile success.

Google has used Big Data, analytics, and massive computational power to create a data-driven and agile business. With cloud services like its recently launched BigQuery product, it is enabling, for many businesses, Google-scale data analytics on billion-row data sets for the first time. This session will focus on why Google developed these technologies and how Google products like App Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery can give you simple, reliable and effective tools to leverage the power of data. It will also look at real-life use cases, their business impact, and what businesses can learn from this.

The consolidation of applications and servers out of branch offices and into centralized data centers has driven an increased amount of delay sensitive traffic over the WAN. Now the WAN is being challenged to support the adoption of desktop virtualization, the dynamic movement of VMs and to enable both SaaS and IaaS. Unfortunately the WAN does not follow Moore’s law and so it is not experiencing the same type of price reduction as is computing and storage resources. The panelists in this fast-paced session will discuss some of the most promising emerging WAN technologies and services that you can utilize to successfully support emerging requirements.

Cloud computing isn’t a ‘what’, but a ‘how’. The key to transforming your current data center to a cloud environment is to first understand how to approach basic issues such as standardization of technology choices, IT process and governance. Join this session to learn from those who have gone before you with best practices and how to avoid the most common mistakes and pitfalls.

With so much of the success of wireless and mobility dependent upon advances in technology, we’re kicking off this year’s event with a roundtable plenary session examining key developments in basic wireless technologies and standards, operational and management systems, mobile devices and operating systems, and mobile applications. Our objective is to frame the discussion for the entire Wireless and Mobility track, and to outline key technology directions for enterprises and other organizations for the next five years.

Tablets have taken the IT world by storm, providing a platform that’s convenient, inexpensive, and powerful. But the tablet world is also diverse, rapidly-changing, and challenging for IT operations staff in terms of support, security, and reliability. This session will explore the next steps in the evolution of the tablet, both from a device perspective as well as in terms of operational requirements and optimizing enterprise mobility strategy.

Offering video services in the cloud could potentially solve a lot of problems: Interoperability; latency; capital investment. But it remains an unproven model both for providers and customers. At the same time, the amount of ad hoc video within enterprise networks is growing: It’s being generated from consumer-grade systems such as Skype and Skype-supported Facebook video; and increasingly “home-based telepresence” is being enabled through game consoles such as Xbox/Kinect. Also, with the explosion of tablet usage, your wireless LAN may be carrying volumes of video traffic that you never anticipated when you deployed the WLAN.

This session will address two separate but equally challenging trends within enterprise video: Whether video as an application is ready to move into the cloud (and what kind of cloud—public, private, or hybrid); and whether you’re ready to deal with the impact that video traffic will have on your network.

This session will look at video as a collaboration medium: Is it hype? Does anyone need to see the faces of colleagues that they know well and collaborate with regularly, often in person? How much does the quality of the video matter when considering video’s importance as a collaboration medium? In this session, experts will debate and dissect the factors that make video either succeed or fall short within enterprises. We’ll consider both room-based and desktop implementations, looking at the unique factors in each scenario, as well as evaluating whether or not one type of deployment is more effective than the other in certain collaborative situations.

As we move up the stack from machines to applications and services, developers need to work with new tools. One example of this is Node.js, which is now an integral part of multiple cloud stacks. Node.js has grown from curious idea, to interesting product, to full blown software stack. From its beginnings as a last-minute presentation at JSConf.EU, to running the software behind mobile apps for companies as diverse as Voxer and Walmart, and occupying the position of "most-watched" project on github, Node is a technology at the top of many cloud developers' toolboxes. But what is Node? Why has it received so much attention? And where is it going next?

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

A peer-led session designed to discuss the challenges, solutions, best practices and emerging business models around cloud integration. This executive peer-led session will explore how today’s leading IT integrators providers are building best of breed cloud solutions for their customers by piecing together the right infrastructure building blocks, virtualizing servers and storage platforms and layering on top of that the right mix of application and integration services. This forum will address the solutions available from today’s leading hardware, software and service providers and how those disparate technologies make up only a small piece of the overall cloud solution. So the only way today’s solution providers can differentiate themselves is by investing in cloud integration services. Some would argue that such an investment is guarantee for future success while hesitation or procrastination could result in disaster. This forum will bring together executives who want to learn from one another, understand the ecosystem, players and cloud integration best practices and services you need to succeed.

The increased adoption of cloud-based services is contributing to a dramatic rise in inter-data center traffic. The related escalation of WAN costs, combined with the emergence of carrier-grade Ethernet, is leading a growing number of data center operators to deploy their own Ethernet-based data center interconnect (DCI) networks. This panel session provides a real-world overview of the business and operational challenges associated with deploying high-performance Ethernet-based DCI networks, as well as the new technology solutions that allow data center operators to scale capacity with greater efficiency while providing the visibility and control required to meet enterprise customer’s SLAs.

The topic of DCI is growing in importance for data center operators of all types and sizes. Attendees of this panel session will gain a better understanding of the challenges associated with designing and operating Ethernet-based DCI networks, as well as the advantages in terms of business flexibility, control and scale. The session will be approached from an educational perspective, with participation from a leading industry analyst, a top-tier data center operator and a technology vendor to provide a balanced, real-world view. This content will be relevant to data center strategic planners and architects, and business planners and managers.

Every year, humanity generates more information than before. We're only now learning how to harness it, putting powerful new processing architectures to work to glean insights from the petabytes of data we have on customers, markets, competitors, and employees. For IT this means two things: a new role as the go-to analyst in charge of crunching this information, and a new set of architectures that can store and crunch all of the information while staying within the law.

Click here for more information

In this session we'll go over some of the big terms in Big Data and teach you how they differ. We'll go over the difference between Hadoop and map/reduce, Cassandra and key/value stores, and all the rest!

Whereas convergence has become the buzzword defining contemporary IT, mobility is more properly defined by the opposite situation, divergence. An amazing variety of strategies can be applied to implement optimal solutions. This user and applications roundtable session will explore what’s working – and what’s not – in mobility today, with IT managers discussing their experiences and solutions that have proven their value.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

Executives everywhere are watching the clouds roll in, and with them will come new costs in the form of risks, distractions and whole new set of skills required to keep your company ahead of the game. After helping over 2500 companies manage over $70 million in cloud spending, CEO Mat Ellis will share his unique insight into the changing landscape of cloud costs and how to meet the promise and challenges of the cloud head-on.

Even though the OpenSSL Toolkit has been hacked 44 times since 2002, VPN solutions continue to heavily rely on this technology. In fact, some of the most high-profile security breaches have involved SSL VPNs. This begs the question, are users not using the technology correctly? Or is SSL simply not as good as all the marketing hype makes it out to be? This year alone, several incidents have surfaced that called into question the security of SSL platforms, like Comodo issuing nine fraudulent certificates affecting several domains and the recent breach at Dutch digital certificate authority DigiNotar, among others. Clearly, confusion exists about the security capabilities of SSL. Ultimately, this misinformation undermines the technology and lessens its appeal in scenarios where SSL is an ideal solution. This session will put the most persistent SSL myths to rest and clarify the technology’s capabilities – and its limitations.

Clouds and the Enterprise: Revolution, Evolution, or More of the Same?

In the early days of the web, we talked about "web security" and "web storage." Now it's just security and storage. Today's cloud issues are tomorrow's IT issues, and despite the huge innovations in on-demand computing over the last five years, some cloud strategies just kick the can down the road to the next generation of IT professionals. Clouds might solve some capacity and provisioning issues, but for many enterprises they raise as many questions as they answer: How do we bridge the gap between public and private? How do we maintain portability and avoid lock-in? And how do we manage it all?

Decades ago on the Interop stage, we saw a war between IPX/SPX, Vines, DECnet and others. Ultimately TCP/IP won because it was open, it wasn't proprietary, there were no license fees, and it was built on what many referred to as "loose consensus and working code." We're in a similar war now, with battle lines drawn between hypervisors, cloud stacks, and public providers.

In this panel discussion we'll tackle some of these questions head-on and decide which parts of the cloud are revolutionary, which are incremental, and which haven't changed in thirty years

Wi-Fi has secured its position as the primary, default, and certainly preferred access vehicle for users everywhere. But even with market dominance and an installed base in the billions, industry standards and specifications continue to evolve at a rapid pace. This session will discuss the latest developments in wireless-LAN technology, including gigabit technologies, new frequency bands, advances in public access systems, and new specs from the Wi-Fi Alliance. We’ll also look at how these innovations will appear in enterprise-class systems (and when), and outline an action plan for the next wave of enterprise deployments.

Multivendor interoperability is a key part of any Unified Communications implementation. Few enterprises will get all of their UC infrastructure and applications from a single vendor. In addition, UC delivers value through integration with business processes, which requires interoperation with other software applications (e.g. document creation and management; for sales, services, logistics; et al.).

Vendors are addressing interoperation in varying degrees and at varying rates, depending on the markets they serve and on their cultures of openness vs. self-sufficiency. This session will help you understand how the vendors are positioning themselves with regard to interoperability, and how that should affect your planning.

Multivendor interoperability is a key part of any Unified Communications implementation. Few enterprises will get all of their UC infrastructure and applications from a single vendor. In addition, UC delivers value through integration with business processes, which requires interoperation with other software applications (e.g. document creation and management; for sales, services, logistics; et al.).

Vendors are addressing interoperation in varying degrees and at varying rates, depending on the markets they serve and on their cultures of openness vs. self-sufficiency. This session will help you understand how the vendors are positioning themselves with regard to interoperability, and how that should affect your planning.

Increasingly, voice and video communications can be embedded in applications that enterprise users work in throughout the day. This may consist of a plug-in or a presence indicator, from which the user can find and connect with those in their enterprise directory—and potentially even those outside the enterprise (where the two entities’ systems are federated). But are vendors really delivering on the potential of these “Communications Enabled Business Processes” (CEBP), and are enterprises ready to implement such integrations? In this session, you’ll learn how communications systems can be integrated with business applications; what the potential benefits of doing so might be for your enterprise; and how to go about implementing the integration. You’ll learn what it will take to transform this capability from a “nice to have” into a business-critical integration, and how to support these systems once they’re integrated.

Mobile security has been a constant (if not growing) issue in IT, and those concerns are now being accelerated with the move to personal-owned devices or “BYOD”. While lost or stolen devices remain the most predominant threat [not sure about this…], BYOD introduces additional concerns regarding mobile malware, jail broken or rooted devices, and the exposure created by connecting to unsecured Wi-Fi networks - and these concerns are of course even greater in regulated industries. Further, more sophisticated users have learned to work around policy with such tricks as forwarding emails to unprotected personal accounts and storing files on cloud-based storage services beyond the reach of IT.
And while much current concern stems from the increasing use of smartphones and tablets that run a new generation of mobile operating systems, mobile security also extends to wireless LANs and other radio-based communications as well.

This session will identify the major areas of concern with regard to authentication, privacy and systems availability. We will look at the key exposures in each of the various wireless technologies including 3G/4G, WiMAX, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, assess how each of the leading mobile operating systems measures up to the requirements of enterprise-grade security, and discuss the role users themselves must play in securing corporate information in this new environment.

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Bring your own device (BYOD) is one of the most important developments in enterprise mobility. With the move away from corporate-provided mobile devices, IT departments are now faced with the challenge of developing plans and policies that address this new environment and ensure that security, management and support to whatever level IT plans to provide. However, BYOD is not just about making employees happy in the short run by allowing them to use the mobile device of their choice - IT must also plan for how mobile applications that can enhance productivity and trigger business transformation can be successfully deployed in this new environment.

This session will deal with the need for a sound mobility policy and discuss the trade-offs involved with the various options for how an organization might proceed with BYOD. Those issues will include plans for user training and responsibilities, device certification, software maintenance, support requirements, and the role of mobile device management systems.

Click here for more information

The promise of cloud computing brings with it the challenges of managing explosive data growth, new service deployment, emerging technologies, and an array of other new demands on the enterprise network. This session will explore some of the top architectural criteria, technologies, and solutions to consider in planning and deploying data center networks to unlock cloud computing’s potential.

One of the key underlying concepts of a software defined network (SDN) is that the switch control plane is decoupled from the data plane and placed in a separate centralized server or controller. This centralization of the control plane makes it relatively easy to programmatically control the entire network. OpenFlow is an open API/protocol that is used between a network controller and a controlled physical switch that provides the forwarding hardware.

This panel of leading networking, server and OS technologists will discuss the latest solutions in building high-performance, scale-out networks for clouds and virtualized applications. Session attendees will receive guidance on requirements to include in RFIs, the hardball questions to ask vendors, and the issues to consider in planning and implementation. Panelist participants are from Arista, Bromium, Juniper and Red Hat.

Embrace or prevent BYOD (Bring Your Own Devices) in the workplace. This is the critical question that enterprise IT departments are faced with today.

Managing an increasingly mobile workforce has become one of the most challenging —and important— responsibilities for IT departments. Users want freedom of choice when it comes to using their smart phones, tablets and other devices in the workplace. This freedom can introduced added risks in security while also introducing issues such as compliance, data liability and network consumption.

Learn how you can gain the visibility needed to manage and secure your network in this new era of mobile devices.

Storage continues to evolve to meet the demands of the enterprise. Whether you are supporting big data initiatives, building a private cloud, going to the cloud, or trying to reduce costs and make more efficient use of your existing storage systems, there are many options to choose from. We’ll also get their take on what is coming in the 12-18 months and how to prepare for it. Come prepared with questions as this session will be mostly Q&A driven.

The statement under debate is that cloud storage is dead on arrival. There are a number of benefits with cloud storage like huge cost savings and supporting public cloud applications, but there are also draw back such as governance and the potential for lock-in. In this debate, our panel of experts will be taking one side or the other and in an old-school debate format, will be arguing their respective points. We’ll ask the audience to vote before and after to see who wins. Bring your questions and stump our experts. We’ll have fun and learn something.

Avoid turning “Bring Your Own Device” into “Bring Your Own Disaster.” Learn about the critical steps for planning a successful BYOD design and implementation, and the value of using a holistic framework for planning a pervasive secure wireless network and working with your service provider.

One of the key underlying concepts of a software defined network (SDN) is that the switch control plane is decoupled from the data plane and placed in a separate centralized server or controller. This centralization of the control plane makes it relatively easy to programmatically control the entire network. OpenFlow is an open API/protocol that is used between a network controller and a controlled physical switch that provides the forwarding hardware.

For over a decade, data center LAN design was largely based on a three-tier switched architecture comprised of access, distribution and core switches. Data center LANs were also based on the use of the spanning tree protocol to ensure a loop-free topology, the use of Ethernet on a best-effort basis, a high over-subscription rate on uplinks and the separation of the data network from the storage network. Now all of these technologies and design assumptions are being questioned.

Let's not forget that strategies like cloud computing, agile processes, and devops still run on servers, storage, and networking. Many cloud, agile, and devops proponents try to commoditize and minimize the value of underlying hardware, the fact someone still as to build and manage the infrastructure that enable faster, better, and more simpler IT. The technologies that will be used in data centers in the next 12 to 18 months are going to be significantly impacted by what you decide today. New technologies in servers, storage, and networking can have a positive impact regardless of your strategic initiatives. In this panel, we’ll discuss what is on the horizon in data center technologies and how you can leverage them. Bring your questions.

Storage continues to evolve to meet the demands of the enterprise. Whether you are supporting big data initiatives, building a private cloud, going to the cloud, or trying to reduce costs and make more efficient use of your existing storage systems, there are many options to choose from. We’ll also get their take on what is coming in the 12-18 months and how to prepare for it. Come prepared with questions as this session will be mostly Q&A driven.

The statement under debate is that cloud storage is dead on arrival. There are a number of benefits with cloud storage like huge cost savings and supporting public cloud applications, but there are also draw back such as governance and the potential for lock-in. In this debate, our panel of experts will be taking one side or the other and in an old-school debate format, will be arguing their respective points. We’ll ask the audience to vote before and after to see who wins. Bring your questions and stump our experts. We’ll have fun and learn something.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about assuring the user experience. While many vendors claim an ability to monitor and report on user experience, the question is what vantage point provides the most relevant view into what a user is actually experiencing? Does looking at synthetic transactions that are meant to replicate a user transaction provide such a view? Or does looking at how applications perform across multiple tiers within the data center represent a user experience perspective. The panelists on this session will take opposing views on the question of how best to assure the user experience and will provide you the information you need to determine what makes the most sense in your environment.

Offering video services in the cloud could potentially solve a lot of problems: Interoperability; latency; capital investment. But it remains an unproven model both for providers and customers. At the same time, the amount of ad hoc video within enterprise networks is growing: It’s being generated from consumer-grade systems such as Skype and Skype-supported Facebook video; and increasingly “home-based telepresence” is being enabled through game consoles such as Xbox/Kinect. Also, with the explosion of tablet usage, your wireless LAN may be carrying volumes of video traffic that you never anticipated when you deployed the WLAN.

This session will address two separate but equally challenging trends within enterprise video: Whether video as an application is ready to move into the cloud (and what kind of cloud—public, private, or hybrid); and whether you’re ready to deal with the impact that video traffic will have on your network.

The good news is that it is now possible to move virtual machines (VMs) between physical servers in a matter of seconds. The bad news is that while computing has become virtual and dynamic, most network infrastructures are still largely physical and static. As a result, it can take days to manually configure parameters such as QoS settings and ACLs in order to support the dynamic movement of VMs. The panelists in this session will identify the techniques such as VXLAN that you can implement to seamlessly move VMs between servers.

Modern data center networks need a high performance and scalable network fabric architecture for server and storage interconnectivity. OpenFlow and Software Defined Networking offer an open strategy in building such a fabric. What are the unique benefits of an OpenFlow based fabric vs. a proprietary protocol based fabric? How do you build a data center network architecture with OpenFlow based fabric? This session will provide key understanding of the disruptive power of an OpenFlow network fabric in delivering seamless scale, security, agility and network virtualization.

With so much of the success of wireless and mobility dependent upon advances in technology, we’re kicking off this year’s event with a roundtable plenary session examining key developments in basic wireless technologies and standards, operational and management systems, mobile devices and operating systems, and mobile applications. Our objective is to frame the discussion for the entire Wireless and Mobility track, and to outline key technology directions for enterprises and other organizations for the next five years.

In spite of all the hype about “BYOD,” desktop telephones will be the mainstay of many enterprise users for at least the near term—for many job descriptions, there’s simply no need for a change. However, for an increasing number of workers, mobiles and PC/tablet-based softphones are the wave of the future. Chances are, your enterprise will feature a mix of these types of users—traditional phone, PC softphone and mobile. So how do you determine who gets what kind of device? How do you manage and set policy for this multiplicity of devices? And how do you provide the best collaboration experience for the increasing number of users who use multiple types of devices (connecting over multiple types of networks) over the course of a single day? This session will present you with the trends and choices in each area of enterprise communications devices, and will offer a provocative discussion about what works best, and where to place your bets.

Our panel of high-level editors and top industry bloggers will reveal how to move beyond Twitter and LinkedIn and have a real impact on the technology landscape. What’s the one guiding principle you must always follow? How do you navigate ethical and FTC considerations? What resources are out there to help you project a professional image? We’ll answer these questions and more.

Wi-Fi has secured its position as the primary, default, and certainly preferred access vehicle for users everywhere. But even with market dominance and an installed base in the billions, industry standards and specifications continue to evolve at a rapid pace. This session will discuss the latest developments in wireless-LAN technology, including gigabit technologies, new frequency bands, advances in public access systems, and new specs from the Wi-Fi Alliance. We’ll also look at how these innovations will appear in enterprise-class systems (and when), and outline an action plan for the next wave of enterprise deployments.

In this session we review how the InteropNet deploys the live physical network to over 300,000 sqft of space in just 5 days. With a combination of testing, mobile and paperless documentation strategies and tools the InteropNet deployment is monitored until completely certified.

Join us for a discussion on the lessons learned from testing InteropNET and how you can apply these lessons to your own network. The key take-away will be how proactive testing of networks as they are deployed, upgraded, and changed minimizes network degradations and downtime and reduces time spent on reactive troubleshooting.

When a DDoS attack is launched against a network, how does the site admin know what’s happening? The building doesn't burn down and alarms may not even be triggered. Yet this silent event can cause devastating outcomes for the business. This session will take an in-depth look at what are predicted to be some of 2012's most menacing application-layer attacks. It will also review the impact of application-layer DDoS attacks on web server implementations. Lab and real-world observations of various attack scenarios will be identified to provide practical technical indicators including network and server activity so attendees might enhance existing monitoring systems. Attack mitigation techniques will also be highlighted for their capabilities and effectiveness.

Attendees will gain insight about how to distinguish between network flood DDoS and application-layer DDoS attacks and to recognize the onset of an application-layer DDoS attack. Attendees will also learn how to determine expected impact to web sites that experience application-layer DDOS attacks. Lastly, guests will learn how to defend their web sites and servers against application-layer DDoS attacks and predict the likely future of Internet-based DDoS attack activity.

The planet is becoming smarter, with intelligence being infused into everything around us. And as the systems of this planet become smarter, we have the opportunity to open up meaningful new possibilities for making the world work better - more productive, more efficient, more sustainable, more livable.
Three things have brought this about:

• The world is becominginstrumented, smart phones and tablets are creating new data all the time.
• The world is becominginterconnected: the amount of information created by those interactions grows exponentially.
• All things are becoming intelligent:Algorithms and powerful systems can analyze and turn those mountains of data into actual decisions and actions that make the world work better. Smarter.

And this information isn’t just structured data – it’s coming from content, forms, sensors, video, medical images, e-mail. And it’s not standing still, with transactions making way for streams of data constantly flowing into the organization.
All of this progress poses new challenges and new opportunities for all of us
Yet many organizations are still a long way from where they want to be. The status quo won’t do in order to meet financial and operational objectives. Traditional approaches have only taken them so far. They need to move beyond “sense and respond” to be able to predict and act with certainty. They need to replace decisions made on uninformed instinct and intuition to ones that are fact-driven and can be driven by real-time information.
Leading organizations are starting to expand access to analytics beyond the handful of experts in the back office and provide analytics and insight to all levels of the organization, at every point of impact. And, they are moving beyond simply automating their systems, to seeing the additional benefits that come from optimizing their business.
The result is rapid, informed and confidentdecisions and actions optimized across the organization.
By leveraging the cloud for big data and analytics, companies can:

• Have quicker time to market
• Ability to analyze data in real or near real time
• On demand access to compute power to provide the reporting and analysis
• Single storage location that can be accessed by different management groups
• Pay as you grow

Every year, humanity generates more information than before. We're only now learning how to harness it, putting powerful new processing architectures to work to glean insights from the petabytes of data we have on customers, markets, competitors, and employees. For IT this means two things: a new role as the go-to analyst in charge of crunching this information, and a new set of architectures that can store and crunch all of the information while staying within the law.

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Performance issues resulting from SaaS usage, which require both the private WAN along with public internet pose new challenges for businesses relying on this application delivery method. This session will cover recent developments that help overcome these performance challenges, and enable businesses to reap the rewards of SaaS.

This panel of leading networking, server and OS technologists will discuss the latest solutions in building high-performance, scale-out networks for clouds and virtualized applications. Session attendees will receive guidance on requirements to include in RFIs, the hardball questions to ask vendors, and the issues to consider in planning and implementation. Panelist participants are from Arista, Bromium, Juniper and Red Hat.

Enterprise IT departments are under pressure to reduce costs, improve efficiency and lower carbon footprint. Printing is a logical area to seek eco-friendly savings. But measuring and optimizing print usage patterns is out-of-scope for most IT operations. This session will explore current options for tracking, managing and reducing print costs.

No matter how the IT landscape changes, protecting your network architecture continues to be extremely critical and unpredictable. Distributed networking and computing spaces often times go unmanaged despite their importance. Are you responsible for branch IT environments? Are you challenged with maintaining access for remote users? Are you deploying IT equipment in the cloud or at a co-location facility? Join us as we discuss the importance of managing these distributed IT spaces including strategies for maintaining availability, energy cost savings opportunities and dealing with a lack of onsite technical resources.

With cost control, competitive advantage, and the very success of any organization now dependent upon mobile communications, the unification of landlines, cellular, Wi-Fi, voice mail, and more into a single manageable resource is taking on new importance and offering benefits that go straight to the bottom line. This session will look at the current state of mobile UC, discuss how mobile UC can be implemented in enterprise settings, and explore the evolution of what is rapidly becoming a vital IT resource.

This session will cover some of the significant Intellectual Property ("IP") developments over the past year and their practical impacts on cloud related business activities, including an introduction to the 2011 Leahy-Smith America Invents Act and recent significant copyright caselaw. Further, there will be a discussion of best practices in protecting cloud-related innovation.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

Every year, humanity generates more information than before. We're only now learning how to harness it, putting powerful new processing architectures to work to glean insights from the petabytes of data we have on customers, markets, competitors, and employees. For IT this means two things: a new role as the go-to analyst in charge of crunching this information, and a new set of architectures that can store and crunch all of the information while staying within the law.

Click here for more information

Managing mobile applications represents one of the biggest challenges for enterprise IT today. From development to deployment to policies to operations, application strategy can have dramatic impacts – and not always positive – on an organization. Unless, of course, IT managers are armed with the techniques and strategies that ensure app success. From local apps to the cloud to enterprise app stores, this session will help you formulate app solutions that work.

Moving beyond server consolidation to an agile virtual infrastructure to a private cloud is a top priority for most organizations, but not an easy road. Getting there successfully means addressing a variety of management issues -- automating virtual operations and provisioning; managing performance and capacity; troubleshooting across the virtual and physical infrastructure; lifecycle management; and eventually managing across multiple hypervisors. Hear experiences and best practices on how layering the right management capabilities onto your virtual environment will improve your IT operations and transform your environment into a private cloud.

Now that you've implemented server virtualization, the next step to realizing its full potential is to add the management and automation layers to deliver cloud-like services. By optimizing and automating the virtual infrastructure, and adding self-service capabilities, IT can transform itself to run as a private cloud. This session is a primer on how to implement advanced management and automation capabilities such as automated policy-based management, performance and capacity management, automated disaster recovery, automated and self service provisioning and service catalogs. It will discuss the value and process of implementing these advanced management and automation features and describe the landscape of solution vendors, from start-ups to long-time industry leaders.

The definition of the ‘desktop’ is changing in many ways. The term 'desktop' is becoming a metaphor for the collective devices, applications, services and content to which users subscribe, both within the enterprise and in the cloud. Virtualization technologies have expanded and improved, offering better ways to deliver both desktops and applications, ranging from VDI to session virtualization to streamed desktops to client hypervisors to Desktop as a Service. New devices continue to emerge and proliferate (including tablets, smartphones, thin clients, and zero clients) and Bring Your Own Computer/Device (BYOC/BYOD) initiatives are gaining ground. As organizations consider the best strategy for delivering and supporting desktops and applications for the next decade, while addressing near-term issues like Windows 7, IT has the opportunity to change the paradigm for delivering access to different users from any device anywhere.

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Cloud orchestration stacks are an important component in completing the move to a private cloud. In this rapid fire session, presenters representing four of the major cloud stacks will have 10 minutes each to present their responses to ten key questions about the functions, features and capabilities of each cloud stack. Questions include: services and capabilities offered; languages, operating systems, APIs and image formats supported; virtualization stacks supported; management tools; portability; hardware, capacity, performance and availability constraints; , pricing and more.

Building private clouds requires a combination of virtualization, optimization, automation, monitoring/management, self-service portals, and service catalogs. In this panel, we'll discuss the building blocks and best practices for successfully building private clouds, and the options IT has today to turn their data centers into on-demand computing resources for their organization.

Private clouds have come a long way from their humble beginnings in virtualization. Today's enterprise IT professionals can create rich on-premise, automated, self-service, shared computing offerings for their stakeholders. Private clouds begin with foundations like VMware, Xen, Hyper-V and KVM; and now include optimized infrastructure, advanced management, automation and orchestration, and cloud stacks like OpenStack, CloudStack, Nimbula, and Eucalyuptus. And of course, there are also service catalogs, charge-back, and self-service interfaces that let IT get out of the way of delivering to service consumers.

Click here for more information

Much of the hype about cloud computing focuses on how clouds can avoid up-front costs and how cloud efficiencies can reduce computing costs overall. But how does this apply to private clouds? In this panel, we’ll discuss the realities of private cloud computing from a business perspective, including ROI and real life business case scenarios and whether/how private cloud computing can be cost effective for you.

Server and desktop virtualization bring a slew of new acronyms, technologies, concepts and trends. Need a high-level overview of what different types of virtualization mean to you, your business and the industry overall? Do you want to get your arms around server virtualization, available hypervisors and tools?

Plus, everyone is talking about desktop virtualization, but what does that really mean? There are a variety of virtualization technologies for delivering, provisioning and managing desktops and applications. Learn about a broad view of desktop virtualization which includes and explains VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure), server-based computing/session/presentation virtualization, hosted applications, terminal services/RDS, client hosted virtualization, client hypervisors, server-side and client side application virtualization, user virtualization/personalization and more, and how to match these technologies with user requirements.

If you are looking for a solid foundation for understanding server and desktop virtualization, this double session crash course is the one for you.

The definition of the “desktop” is changing. The workforce is increasingly mobile, and there is a plethora of choices – tablets, smartphones, thin/zero clients, client hypervisors, virtual desktops, hosted applications, cloud-based services – available now with even more options coming. The term 'desktop' is becoming a metaphor for the collective devices, applications, services and content to which users subscribe both within the enterprise and in the cloud. Hear our roundtable of industry visionaries discuss the desktop of the future and the future of the desktop, and how you should prepare your infrastructure for what's next.

Clouds and the Enterprise: Revolution, Evolution, or More of the Same?

In the early days of the web, we talked about "web security" and "web storage." Now it's just security and storage. Today's cloud issues are tomorrow's IT issues, and despite the huge innovations in on-demand computing over the last five years, some cloud strategies just kick the can down the road to the next generation of IT professionals. Clouds might solve some capacity and provisioning issues, but for many enterprises they raise as many questions as they answer: How do we bridge the gap between public and private? How do we maintain portability and avoid lock-in? And how do we manage it all?

Decades ago on the Interop stage, we saw a war between IPX/SPX, Vines, DECnet and others. Ultimately TCP/IP won because it was open, it wasn't proprietary, there were no license fees, and it was built on what many referred to as "loose consensus and working code." We're in a similar war now, with battle lines drawn between hypervisors, cloud stacks, and public providers.

In this panel discussion we'll tackle some of these questions head-on and decide which parts of the cloud are revolutionary, which are incremental, and which haven't changed in thirty years

Personal liability, also known as bring your own device or BYOD, is perhaps the most visible and important trend in mobility today, and one filled simultaneously with the opportunity for cost savings and greater user satisfaction, as well as major challenges for enterprise IT security, integrity, and reliability. This session will explore all aspects of the BYOD trend and phenomenon, and offer practical advice to making BYOD work in your organization.

The term DCIM seems to have many different meaning. In this classroom we will get behind the hype and explore what to consider when planning to manage the enterprise IT infrastructure more efficiently. We will review how the InteropNet takes advantage of DCIM principles to deliver the network in use at Interop.

Managing mobile applications represents one of the biggest challenges for enterprise IT today. From development to deployment to policies to operations, application strategy can have dramatic impacts – and not always positive – on an organization. Unless, of course, IT managers are armed with the techniques and strategies that ensure app success. From local apps to the cloud to enterprise app stores, this session will help you formulate app solutions that work.

There are plenty of PBXs out there, but as a concept, the PBX—i.e., the voice-only switch—is dead. Emerging in its place is the concept of session management: A middleware platform that, like the PBX, centralizes and manages the establishment of communications among end users—but that, unlike the PBX, handles all media (voice, video and data), serving any endpoint and any application that the user might be on. The heart of Session Management is the SIP protocol, but SIP is being implemented in different ways by different vendors, complicating any enterprise’s attempt to unify its session management around a single middleware platform. In this breakout, you’ll learn how session management works, how (and whether) to migrate from PBXs to session management middleware, and how your decisions around session management limit or open up your options for empowering end user collaboration.

For over a decade, data center LAN design was largely based on a three-tier switched architecture comprised of access, distribution and core switches. Data center LANs were also based on the use of the spanning tree protocol to ensure a loop-free topology, the use of Ethernet on a best-effort basis, a high over-subscription rate on uplinks and the separation of the data network from the storage network. Now all of these technologies and design assumptions are being questioned.

This panel of leading networking, server and OS technologists will discuss the latest solutions in building high-performance, scale-out networks for clouds and virtualized applications. Session attendees will receive guidance on requirements to include in RFIs, the hardball questions to ask vendors, and the issues to consider in planning and implementation. Panelist participants are from Arista, Bromium, Juniper and Red Hat.

One of the key underlying concepts of a software defined network (SDN) is that the switch control plane is decoupled from the data plane and placed in a separate centralized server or controller. This centralization of the control plane makes it relatively easy to programmatically control the entire network. OpenFlow is an open API/protocol that is used between a network controller and a controlled physical switch that provides the forwarding hardware.

Tablets have taken the IT world by storm, providing a platform that’s convenient, inexpensive, and powerful. But the tablet world is also diverse, rapidly-changing, and challenging for IT operations staff in terms of support, security, and reliability. This session will explore the next steps in the evolution of the tablet, both from a device perspective as well as in terms of operational requirements and optimizing enterprise mobility strategy.

Wi-Fi has secured its position as the primary, default, and certainly preferred access vehicle for users everywhere. But even with market dominance and an installed base in the billions, industry standards and specifications continue to evolve at a rapid pace. This session will discuss the latest developments in wireless-LAN technology, including gigabit technologies, new frequency bands, advances in public access systems, and new specs from the Wi-Fi Alliance. We’ll also look at how these innovations will appear in enterprise-class systems (and when), and outline an action plan for the next wave of enterprise deployments.

2012 has been labeled the year of the data center fabric. A properly architected data center fabric has the potential to bring scalability, agility, virtualization and elasticity to the data center unleashing the, as yet, untapped potential from exiting investments in server visualization platforms. However, the marketplace is abundant with solutions offering vastly different and sometimes confusing alternatives. This session on data center fabrics will provide insight on some of the critical technology choices and best practices to maximize success and minimize risk in the deployment of a data center fabric. We will also provide an overview of Alcatel-Lucent’s award winning data center fabric: the Alcatel-Lucent Mesh.

The vast majority of IT organizations are in the process of re-designing their data center LANs. Most likely the best approach for IT organizations to take is a continuation of what they have always done. But what if it isn’t? What if the best approach is something very different? Recently OpenFlow and Software Defined Networks have been getting a lot of attention as providing an alternative approach to network design. The panelists in this session will discuss those techniques. Are they the same thing with different names? What specific problems are solved by these techniques and when will they become mainstream solutions?

Virtualization has a significant impact on security and requires fundamental changes to security practices. Virtual environment security is required not only by compliance but by security policies. What does this mean to you? This session will discuss best practices for implementing security within your virtual environment. Can you implement defense in depth within the virtual environment? How does virtual environment security change when organizations move to a hybrid cloud? What is the impact to the virtualization and security teams? These and other questions will be answered in this session.

Attendees will gain an understanding of the current issues and risks of virtualization, concepts and practices they can use immediately, tools they can use which will integrate into their existing environment, and how to develop a long strategy for virtualization and hybrid cloud security.

Multivendor interoperability is a key part of any Unified Communications implementation. Few enterprises will get all of their UC infrastructure and applications from a single vendor. In addition, UC delivers value through integration with business processes, which requires interoperation with other software applications (e.g. document creation and management; for sales, services, logistics; et al.).

Vendors are addressing interoperation in varying degrees and at varying rates, depending on the markets they serve and on their cultures of openness vs. self-sufficiency. This session will help you understand how the vendors are positioning themselves with regard to interoperability, and how that should affect your planning.

There are plenty of PBXs out there, but as a concept, the PBX—i.e., the voice-only switch—is dead. Emerging in its place is the concept of session management: A middleware platform that, like the PBX, centralizes and manages the establishment of communications among end users—but that, unlike the PBX, handles all media (voice, video and data), serving any endpoint and any application that the user might be on. The heart of Session Management is the SIP protocol, but SIP is being implemented in different ways by different vendors, complicating any enterprise’s attempt to unify its session management around a single middleware platform. In this breakout, you’ll learn how session management works, how (and whether) to migrate from PBXs to session management middleware, and how your decisions around session management limit or open up your options for empowering end user collaboration.

Moving beyond server consolidation to an agile virtual infrastructure to a private cloud is a top priority for most organizations, but not an easy road. Getting there successfully means addressing a variety of management issues -- automating virtual operations and provisioning; managing performance and capacity; troubleshooting across the virtual and physical infrastructure; lifecycle management; and eventually managing across multiple hypervisors. Hear experiences and best practices on how layering the right management capabilities onto your virtual environment will improve your IT operations and transform your environment into a private cloud.

Private clouds have come a long way from their humble beginnings in virtualization. Today's enterprise IT professionals can create rich on-premise, automated, self-service, shared computing offerings for their stakeholders. Private clouds begin with foundations like VMware, Xen, Hyper-V and KVM; and now include optimized infrastructure, advanced management, automation and orchestration, and cloud stacks like OpenStack, CloudStack, Nimbula, and Eucalyuptus. And of course, there are also service catalogs, charge-back, and self-service interfaces that let IT get out of the way of delivering to service consumers.

Click here for more information

Much of the hype about cloud computing focuses on how clouds can avoid up-front costs and how cloud efficiencies can reduce computing costs overall. But how does this apply to private clouds? In this panel, we’ll discuss the realities of private cloud computing from a business perspective, including ROI and real life business case scenarios and whether/how private cloud computing can be cost effective for you.

Both public and private clouds are now at the center of contemporary IT strategy and thinking, and the cloud fits nicely into a modern mobility strategy – if it’s properly implemented, that is. And, even where local apps are the solution of choice, much of the data for those apps will reside in the cloud. This session will provide real-world advice on applying cloud-based IT techniques, as well as virtualization, to storage, applications, collaboration and more.

While one is never “done” when it comes to security, successful strategies for mobile security are now in place at many organizations. But with new challenges appearing on an almost daily basis, viable security implementations require a combination of tools, techniques, and best practices in order to achieve their vital mission. This session will present an outline of security challenges and how these can be optimally addressed in a mobile environment.

Big Data clusters and SDN enabled clouds invite a new approach to data center networking. This session for data center architects will explore the transition from traditional scale-up chassis based Layer 2 centric networking, to the next generation of scale-out Layer 3 CLOS based fabrics of fixed switches.

Tablets have taken the IT world by storm, providing a platform that’s convenient, inexpensive, and powerful. But the tablet world is also diverse, rapidly-changing, and challenging for IT operations staff in terms of support, security, and reliability. This session will explore the next steps in the evolution of the tablet, both from a device perspective as well as in terms of operational requirements and optimizing enterprise mobility strategy.

Join us for an interactive discussion where you’ll learn how 1.8M IT pros in Spiceworks plan to spend their $325B+ collective budget.

• Hear IT pros’ plans for cloud computing, virtualization and mobility

• Get insights on top priorities for IT spending, staffing and adoption

• Take away “Do’s/Don’ts” for engaging IT across social channels and marketplaces

The Software-Defined Data Center: The Future of Enterprise IT

IT is under enormous pressure to deliver more value to the business. To meet the challenge, IT must embrace a datacenter platform free of traditionally complex and rigid infrastructure operations. IT needs infrastructure services recasted as virtual software services that are automatically and dynamically configured to meet the needs of all application workloads. In short, IT needs a software-defined datacenter that delivers the peak of automation, flexibility and efficiency. In his keynote, Steve will discuss immediate and future benefits of this approach to IT.

For over a decade, data center LAN design was largely based on a three-tier switched architecture comprised of access, distribution and core switches. Data center LANs were also based on the use of the spanning tree protocol to ensure a loop-free topology, the use of Ethernet on a best-effort basis, a high over-subscription rate on uplinks and the separation of the data network from the storage network. Now all of these technologies and design assumptions are being questioned.

Offering video services in the cloud could potentially solve a lot of problems: Interoperability; latency; capital investment. But it remains an unproven model both for providers and customers. At the same time, the amount of ad hoc video within enterprise networks is growing: It’s being generated from consumer-grade systems such as Skype and Skype-supported Facebook video; and increasingly “home-based telepresence” is being enabled through game consoles such as Xbox/Kinect. Also, with the explosion of tablet usage, your wireless LAN may be carrying volumes of video traffic that you never anticipated when you deployed the WLAN.

This session will address two separate but equally challenging trends within enterprise video: Whether video as an application is ready to move into the cloud (and what kind of cloud—public, private, or hybrid); and whether you’re ready to deal with the impact that video traffic will have on your network.

The data flows inherent in cloud computing are global, yet laws governing the data are local. So which country’s policies apply to which data in which circumstances? And what happens when countries erect legal barriers, or otherwise tip the playing field to favor domestic service providers? It is widely known that a patchwork of international policies creates barriers to the growth of the cloud. But Business Software Alliance President and CEO Robert Holleyman has developed a roadmap for promoting a truly global cloud market by harmonizing rules on tricky issues such as cross-border data flows, privacy, and security.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

The proliferation of mobile devices and tablets is changing the IT landscape. It’s time to hear how users are managing this complex environment. Join us in conversation with customers for insights in setting policies, kinds of access being granted, user expectations and management. This special customer panel will discuss how they are effectively managing the flurry of mobile devices and tablets in their networks.

Offering video services in the cloud could potentially solve a lot of problems: Interoperability; latency; capital investment. But it remains an unproven model both for providers and customers. At the same time, the amount of ad hoc video within enterprise networks is growing: It’s being generated from consumer-grade systems such as Skype and Skype-supported Facebook video; and increasingly “home-based telepresence” is being enabled through game consoles such as Xbox/Kinect. Also, with the explosion of tablet usage, your wireless LAN may be carrying volumes of video traffic that you never anticipated when you deployed the WLAN.

This session will address two separate but equally challenging trends within enterprise video: Whether video as an application is ready to move into the cloud (and what kind of cloud—public, private, or hybrid); and whether you’re ready to deal with the impact that video traffic will have on your network.

This session will look at video as a collaboration medium: Is it hype? Does anyone need to see the faces of colleagues that they know well and collaborate with regularly, often in person? How much does the quality of the video matter when considering video’s importance as a collaboration medium? In this session, experts will debate and dissect the factors that make video either succeed or fall short within enterprises. We’ll consider both room-based and desktop implementations, looking at the unique factors in each scenario, as well as evaluating whether or not one type of deployment is more effective than the other in certain collaborative situations.

Are the days of buying separate server, storage and networking components coming to an end? Systems architectures are being re-invented, with network and storage resources becoming integrated into the same package so that they can be managed together more efficiently. Two years on from the first product launches, the concept of system convergence is starting to catch on with real customers, especially service providers offering Cloud-based services and enterprises implementing private Clouds. It’s a good time to assess how things are panning out and what course they are likely to take over the next 12 to 18 months.

Is converged infrastructure right for you? Come hear from 451 Group analysts and leading converged infrastructure vendors in this panel to better understand the converged infrastructure phenomenon, drill into the taxonomy, and talk real-world deployments of various approaches to assess what makes sense for your organization. We'll discuss approaches from vendors (panel suggestions: - Cisco, VCE, Netapp, HP and start-up Nutanix), across different use cases and organization sizes with technical leaders from these vendors in an interactive panel-style discussion.

The spanning tree protocol (STP) has been a mainstay of LAN design for well over a decade. One of the advantages of STP is that it ensures a loop-free topology for any bridged Ethernet local area network. One of the primary drawbacks of STP is that it only allows for a single active path between any two network nodes and that attribute of STP can severely limit the scalability of the LAN. The panelists on this session will debate the best alternatives to STP. Alternatives will include standards based approaches such as Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation Group, Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) and TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) as well as at least one proprietary approach.

The world has changed and technology leadership must change with it. Gone are the days where being a plumber, a mechanic, a project manager, a digital baby sitter for a less-than-tech-savvy senior management team, or a janitor for data messes is enough. The emergent technology leader is an entrepreneur; an innovator; a data scientist; a change agent; an educator; and a diplomat. A new day of technology leadership is upon us. Join the pioneers who are defining the new standard of leadership excellence.

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There are plenty of PBXs out there, but as a concept, the PBX—i.e., the voice-only switch—is dead. Emerging in its place is the concept of session management: A middleware platform that, like the PBX, centralizes and manages the establishment of communications among end users—but that, unlike the PBX, handles all media (voice, video and data), serving any endpoint and any application that the user might be on. The heart of Session Management is the SIP protocol, but SIP is being implemented in different ways by different vendors, complicating any enterprise’s attempt to unify its session management around a single middleware platform. In this breakout, you’ll learn how session management works, how (and whether) to migrate from PBXs to session management middleware, and how your decisions around session management limit or open up your options for empowering end user collaboration.

In spite of all the hype about “BYOD,” desktop telephones will be the mainstay of many enterprise users for at least the near term—for many job descriptions, there’s simply no need for a change. However, for an increasing number of workers, mobiles and PC/tablet-based softphones are the wave of the future. Chances are, your enterprise will feature a mix of these types of users—traditional phone, PC softphone and mobile. So how do you determine who gets what kind of device? How do you manage and set policy for this multiplicity of devices? And how do you provide the best collaboration experience for the increasing number of users who use multiple types of devices (connecting over multiple types of networks) over the course of a single day? This session will present you with the trends and choices in each area of enterprise communications devices, and will offer a provocative discussion about what works best, and where to place your bets.

Private clouds have come a long way from their humble beginnings in virtualization. Today's enterprise IT professionals can create rich on-premise, automated, self-service, shared computing offerings for their stakeholders. Private clouds begin with foundations like VMware, Xen, Hyper-V and KVM; and now include optimized infrastructure, advanced management, automation and orchestration, and cloud stacks like OpenStack, CloudStack, Nimbula, and Eucalyuptus. And of course, there are also service catalogs, charge-back, and self-service interfaces that let IT get out of the way of delivering to service consumers.

Click here for more information

Much of the hype about cloud computing focuses on how clouds can avoid up-front costs and how cloud efficiencies can reduce computing costs overall. But how does this apply to private clouds? In this panel, we’ll discuss the realities of private cloud computing from a business perspective, including ROI and real life business case scenarios and whether/how private cloud computing can be cost effective for you.

While VMware virtualization is already widely adopted, and private clouds are constantly talked about, many IT organizations are unclear how to implement the steps to build a VMware private cloud. Many CIOs, IT managers and IT administrators are in the process of evolving their data centers and adopting this technology that is re-inventing the model for IT infrastructure. This session will discuss how several IT organizations are building on their VMware infrastructure and adopting private cloud computing, and will show how private clouds can address a wide range of technology and business challenges that span industries.

Several analysts have predicted that 2012 is the year of Platform As A Service, where companies will transition their applications to PaaS platforms. And why not? PaaS promises faster-time-to-market by allowing developers to focus on things they know best and letting the providers worry about infrastructure operations.
But operating in a cloud environment is different from traditional in-house deployment. Developers and architects must understand and embrace the differences before they can develop, deploy and scale applications with just a few clicks. In this session, we'll look at the opportunities—and challenges—that cloud platforms represent for enterprises.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

Moving beyond server consolidation to an agile virtual infrastructure to a private cloud is a top priority for most organizations, but not an easy road. Getting there successfully means addressing a variety of management issues -- automating virtual operations and provisioning; managing performance and capacity; troubleshooting across the virtual and physical infrastructure; lifecycle management; and eventually managing across multiple hypervisors. Hear experiences and best practices on how layering the right management capabilities onto your virtual environment will improve your IT operations and transform your environment into a private cloud.

Cloud orchestration stacks are an important component in completing the move to a private cloud. In this rapid fire session, presenters representing four of the major cloud stacks will have 10 minutes each to present their responses to ten key questions about the functions, features and capabilities of each cloud stack. Questions include: services and capabilities offered; languages, operating systems, APIs and image formats supported; virtualization stacks supported; management tools; portability; hardware, capacity, performance and availability constraints; , pricing and more.

Private clouds have come a long way from their humble beginnings in virtualization. Today's enterprise IT professionals can create rich on-premise, automated, self-service, shared computing offerings for their stakeholders. Private clouds begin with foundations like VMware, Xen, Hyper-V and KVM; and now include optimized infrastructure, advanced management, automation and orchestration, and cloud stacks like OpenStack, CloudStack, Nimbula, and Eucalyuptus. And of course, there are also service catalogs, charge-back, and self-service interfaces that let IT get out of the way of delivering to service consumers.

Click here for more information

Both public and private clouds are now at the center of contemporary IT strategy and thinking, and the cloud fits nicely into a modern mobility strategy – if it’s properly implemented, that is. And, even where local apps are the solution of choice, much of the data for those apps will reside in the cloud. This session will provide real-world advice on applying cloud-based IT techniques, as well as virtualization, to storage, applications, collaboration and more.

With the clear emphasis on apps and Web/cloud services now emerging, does a specific mobile operating system still matter? What are the key differentiators between today’s mobile OS leaders? Does a specific choice of operating system have any real impact on overall enterprise IT efficiency, cost, or success? This session will answer the platform question via detailed analysis and debate.

When migrating applications to the cloud, one size does not fit all. Some things work better as infrastructure; some as platform; and some can be replaced by SaaS. But what goes where? In this panel discussion, we'll look at how IT should plan for the migration to cloud platforms.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

Managing mobile applications represents one of the biggest challenges for enterprise IT today. From development to deployment to policies to operations, application strategy can have dramatic impacts – and not always positive – on an organization. Unless, of course, IT managers are armed with the techniques and strategies that ensure app success. From local apps to the cloud to enterprise app stores, this session will help you formulate app solutions that work.

Implementing server and/or desktop virtualization (e.g. VDI) has serious implications for the storage infrastructure. The requirements for storage are affected and the storage solutions need to be evaluated based on a different set of considerations. Important to consider are the bottlenecks created and how they can limit the number of virtual machines per physical server and the number of virtual desktops. This discussion will explain the implications of virtualized environments on storage and what attributes of a storage system are important to meet the virtualized environment requirements. Performance details of a VDI environment also will be explained to aid in understanding of storage recommendations.

Attendees will gain an understanding of the storage issues created by server virtualization and VDI environments, and the information provided will help determine organizational requirements for storage systems and capabilities that can address these issues.

There are plenty of PBXs out there, but as a concept, the PBX—i.e., the voice-only switch—is dead. Emerging in its place is the concept of session management: A middleware platform that, like the PBX, centralizes and manages the establishment of communications among end users—but that, unlike the PBX, handles all media (voice, video and data), serving any endpoint and any application that the user might be on. The heart of Session Management is the SIP protocol, but SIP is being implemented in different ways by different vendors, complicating any enterprise’s attempt to unify its session management around a single middleware platform. In this breakout, you’ll learn how session management works, how (and whether) to migrate from PBXs to session management middleware, and how your decisions around session management limit or open up your options for empowering end user collaboration.

With cost control, competitive advantage, and the very success of any organization now dependent upon mobile communications, the unification of landlines, cellular, Wi-Fi, voice mail, and more into a single manageable resource is taking on new importance and offering benefits that go straight to the bottom line. This session will look at the current state of mobile UC, discuss how mobile UC can be implemented in enterprise settings, and explore the evolution of what is rapidly becoming a vital IT resource.

In spite of the strides the cloud industry has made in addressing security and integration concerns, large enterprises are still reluctant to adopt the cloud for mission-critical applications. Resistance to cloud adoption is just as much an issue of misaligned incentives and fear of the unknown as it is about legitimate technology concerns. Breaking the impasse on mission-critical apps often can't be done directly and requires proof to be accumulated over a sustained period of time. This session will describe a proven, systematic and repeatable way to make the enterprise comfortable with the cloud for mission critical applications.

For over a decade, data center LAN design was largely based on a three-tier switched architecture comprised of access, distribution and core switches. Data center LANs were also based on the use of the spanning tree protocol to ensure a loop-free topology, the use of Ethernet on a best-effort basis, a high over-subscription rate on uplinks and the separation of the data network from the storage network. Now all of these technologies and design assumptions are being questioned.

Even as wireless now dominates the edge of the enterprise networks, wire is taking on new roles in backhaul, interconnect, and in provisioning ever-more capacity for next-generation wireless LANs. It therefore makes sense to manage wired and wireless networks together as a single entity. But, it’s fair to ask, how much compromise is required here? Can unified networking implementations be cost-effectively managed? And what challenges remain?

While one is never “done” when it comes to security, successful strategies for mobile security are now in place at many organizations. But with new challenges appearing on an almost daily basis, viable security implementations require a combination of tools, techniques, and best practices in order to achieve their vital mission. This session will present an outline of security challenges and how these can be optimally addressed in a mobile environment.

Ben Petro, Senior Vice President, Network Intelligence and Availability at VeriSign, will be presenting on Tuesday, May 8 from 10:15-11:00am. Attendees will learn how with the right tools and resources in place, DNS can act as a layer of sophisticated routing that improves geographically-specific response times, improves security and business continuity, and even drives more efficient and effective content distribution

Even as wireless now dominates the edge of the enterprise networks, wire is taking on new roles in backhaul, interconnect, and in provisioning ever-more capacity for next-generation wireless LANs. It therefore makes sense to manage wired and wireless networks together as a single entity. But, it’s fair to ask, how much compromise is required here? Can unified networking implementations be cost-effectively managed? And what challenges remain?

For over a decade, data center LAN design was largely based on a three-tier switched architecture comprised of access, distribution and core switches. Data center LANs were also based on the use of the spanning tree protocol to ensure a loop-free topology, the use of Ethernet on a best-effort basis, a high over-subscription rate on uplinks and the separation of the data network from the storage network. Now all of these technologies and design assumptions are being questioned.

Multivendor interoperability is a key part of any Unified Communications implementation. Few enterprises will get all of their UC infrastructure and applications from a single vendor. In addition, UC delivers value through integration with business processes, which requires interoperation with other software applications (e.g. document creation and management; for sales, services, logistics; et al.).

Vendors are addressing interoperation in varying degrees and at varying rates, depending on the markets they serve and on their cultures of openness vs. self-sufficiency. This session will help you understand how the vendors are positioning themselves with regard to interoperability, and how that should affect your planning.

The prevention of online theft and fraud is an obvious priority for organizations that rely on the web to interact with customers, partners, and citizens, including corporations, government, banks, online brokerages, healthcare providers, retailers, and more. In the past 18 months advanced malware that was originally designed to commit online banking fraud has been adapted to attack enterprises. Organizations are also being targeted using generic remote access tools. Unlike the past when this type of malware was only found in criminal underground markets, these tools are now readily available on the Internet for about $50. Most organizations today have little or no security measures in place to protect against sophisticated Trojans that can burrow into their networks via VPN, web, and SSL-based remote access connections. The session will include a video demonstration of how these attacks work and are able to penetrate enterprise networks to compromise and steal critical assets.

Successful mobile operations include demands beyond a personal-liability policy and even another key requirement, mobile device management. The complete solution, often called Enterprise Mobility Management, includes policy, expense, and applications management solutions, as well as integration with other operational IT systems. This session will examine the requirements and help define a strategy to ensure mobile success.

As enterprises embrace the new world of consumer tablets, smartphones and laptops, “Bring Your Own Device” policies enable employees and guests to be more mobile and productive. But what are the real costs and challenges brought on by BYOD? We’ll review impacts on WLAN bandwidth, security, access, and overall user experience in this session.

As cloud-based services continue to increase complexity and affect application delivery, the paradigm of the five dimensions of APM has morphed. The lack of visibility created by cloud solutions has caused a shift in application monitoring technologies. These changes include an expanded vendor landscape and a rapidly growing APM ecosystem. Deployment models are also growing to include solutions for public cloud infrastructures.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

Desktop virtualization offers great benefits if done well, but there are many potential pitfalls. This session will cover the highs and lows of multiple virtual desktop project implementations from the field. Experienced architects will discuss successes and failures from their hands-on projects – highlighting what works and what does not; and why. From this you will learn of potential pitfalls to avoid as well as keys to successful VDI projects.

Attendees will hear anecdotes from multiple architects regarding their hands-on project management experiences. These will highlight success and failure, demonstrating what works and what does not work. The lessons learned extend beyond desktop virtualization. This session is beneficial for any field engineer, architect or project manager.

UC is all about improving collaboration and business productivity. Successful adoption of UC services like VoIP, video conferencing, telepresence and desktop video assumes sufficient service quality for users to interact effectively and consistently. UC services are complex and require unforgiving performance levels with always-on availability to meet the high expectations of users and the organization. The reality is that many UC deployments fail to achieve optimal traction due to poor user experiences.

This session will explore:

• Creating a unified strategy for managing and optimizing the delivery of UC services to assure service quality and deliver consistent user experience
• Best practices for achieving a scalable and sustainable approach to assuring UC service delivery
• Simplifying the complexity of managing multi-location, multi-vendor UC deployments while streamlining IT operations to assure UC deployment success
• Lowering the TCO of UC services and improving IT staff productivity and collaboration

A number of vendors have either deployed solutions, or have pre-announced solutions that enable IT organizations to converge their storage, servers and networking. This raises some two fundamental questions. One question is exactly why would IT organizations want to do that. The second question is, assuming that they do want to, how do they go about evaluating solutions and once they do, how do they go about implementing and managing the solution? The panelists in this session will answer those questions and position you to create your convergence strategy.

Google has used Big Data, analytics, and massive computational power to create a data-driven and agile business. With cloud services like its recently launched BigQuery product, it is enabling, for many businesses, Google-scale data analytics on billion-row data sets for the first time. This session will focus on why Google developed these technologies and how Google products like App Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery can give you simple, reliable and effective tools to leverage the power of data. It will also look at real-life use cases, their business impact, and what businesses can learn from this.

While it doesn’t receive as much attention in the trade press as does the data center LAN, the campus LAN is also undergoing fundamental change. The drivers of change in the campus network include the requirement to support a significant increase in video traffic, the need to support the movement of virtual machines within the campus data center and the burgeoning movement to bring your own device (BYOD). The panelists in this session will discuss technologies and design options that you can use to redesign your campus LANs.

Managing your VDI project before it begins may seem daunting, but it’s integral to the project’s success. This session will explore what organizations implementing VDI or looking to expand a POC rollout of VDI must know to get VDI off on the right foot and avoid pitfalls that could jeopardize the project. This includes runaway costs—how to avoid adding CAPEX and OPEX; deadly IOPS—how to measure current input outputs/second per user and per application; why storage sizing is so important; evaluating persistent verses non-persistent desktops; best practices for user-authored data stores; and ensuring a quality user environment.

What knowledge will the attendee gain or benefit from attending your session?
Everyone knows that, while VDI holds tremendous promise, the costs and complexities can—and have—caused many organizations to put VDI projects on hold. Attendees will return to their companies as heroes who put VDI on the right track, certain of what they must assess and put in place to facilitate a strong ROI.

The dynamic nature of virtualized and cloud environments pose new management challenges for IT. This session will provide an overview of VMware’s portfolio of virtualization and cloud management solutions across infrastructure, applications, and IT business management, and demonstrate how these solutions come together to deliver on the vision of IT as a Service.

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Gaming the Hybrid Cloud: Lessons from Zynga's zCloud

Underneath some of the most casual social games like Words With Friends, FarmVille and CityVille exists some serious infrastructure. Zynga, the world’s leading provider of social game services, has taken an innovative path to bring its games to millions of people worldwide. Zynga stands as one of the world’s largest use cases of hybrid cloud computing. It’s private cloud, affectionately called zCloud, looks, feels, and operates similar to the public cloud but allows Zynga to optimize for greater performance, scale and reliability. In March, Zynga announced the launch of the Zynga Platform, a new platform designed to give players a new place to play and developers a new place to build games for millions of people. The platform is made possible because of zCloud, but more so because of Zynga’s willingness to change the game in cloud computing. Hear Allan Leinwand, Zynga’s CTO of infrastructure and chief architect of zCloud, reveal key lessons from gaming the hybrid cloud and bringing play to the world.

Whereas convergence has become the buzzword defining contemporary IT, mobility is more properly defined by the opposite situation, divergence. An amazing variety of strategies can be applied to implement optimal solutions. This user and applications roundtable session will explore what’s working – and what’s not – in mobility today, with IT managers discussing their experiences and solutions that have proven their value.

Building private clouds requires a combination of virtualization, optimization, automation, monitoring/management, self-service portals, and service catalogs. In this panel, we'll discuss the building blocks and best practices for successfully building private clouds, and the options IT has today to turn their data centers into on-demand computing resources for their organization.

Private clouds have come a long way from their humble beginnings in virtualization. Today's enterprise IT professionals can create rich on-premise, automated, self-service, shared computing offerings for their stakeholders. Private clouds begin with foundations like VMware, Xen, Hyper-V and KVM; and now include optimized infrastructure, advanced management, automation and orchestration, and cloud stacks like OpenStack, CloudStack, Nimbula, and Eucalyuptus. And of course, there are also service catalogs, charge-back, and self-service interfaces that let IT get out of the way of delivering to service consumers.

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The next generation of worker threatens to disrupt many established processes within the IT department. These folks use technology adeptly to innovate and collaborate. They have a high level of comfort working in virtual settings, using mobile technologies, and transitioning from one online community to the next. They quickly assess different communities’ social norms (consumer and professional) as well as rules for engagement. There is a deep understanding of the benefit of data sharing and transparency and have developed a greater level of comfort with privacy issues than any previous generation.

What happens when these individuals enter the workforce, become management, and use their collective influence to affect change? They are placing greater pressure on IT consumerization since they place greater value on their ability to use applications, tools and networks than on the applications and the support structure. This includes the push to cloud based computing as well as the concept of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) whose adoption within enterprises is quickly being accelerated in one part to accommodate this next generation of worker.

Corporations are struggling to understand the needs of this generation while providing assurance around compliance and security. What happens when current practices, such as remotely wiping data, become irrelevant? The cloud enables multiple copies of data while the integration of personal and business data has rendered the practice illegal in many countries. How are organizations evaluating and putting into place these shifts in IT usage? What are the benefits in moving from a standard to variable IT consumption model? How can IT departments leverage engaged and activated communities to assist with the adoption and rollout of these new services? What lessons can be learned from consumer usage of these new IT services?

Key learnings from this session will include:

• Generational characteristics of this new set of workers based on the presenter’s interaction as a Researcher, Professor and Advisor
• Shifts in consumption habits around IT, data, and devices
• Case studies of companies adopting new models to accommodate Gen D
• Social software trends and how this is driving IT commoditization
• How does Carnegie Mellon University’s IT staff accommodate the needs of 12K students across multiple locations?

As the compute and storage architectures are increasingly virtualized, today’s network architecture in the data center environment is becoming a major bottleneck to workload and operations agility. In contrast to the provisioning of virtual machines which can be accomplished in a matter of minutes, configuration changes to the data center networks need to go through careful validation and potential troubleshooting which often requires hours or even days to complete. Virtualizing the network, similar to virtualizing the computing and storage environments, is the new focal point of data center operations. Currently there are two major approaches towards data center network virtualization. One is based on the virtual networking framework implemented in the hypervisor environment and the other is based on the OpenFlow-based Software Defined Networking (SDN) framework. This session will provide an overview of the emerging architectures for data center network virtualization.

Got BYOD? We'll examine the drivers behind the Consumerization of IT from both an IT and end-user perspective, and discuss various approaches and technologies to mobile management in the market today. We'll also analyze results from a customer survey regarding the use of Enterprise App Stores through the eyes of companies who are looking to get the most out of it.

Got BYOD? We'll examine the drivers behind the Consumerization of IT from both an IT and end-user perspective, and discuss various approaches and technologies to mobile management in the market today. We'll also analyze results from a customer survey regarding the use of Enterprise App Stores through the eyes of companies who are looking to get the most out of it.

For enterprises, managing security in today's ever-changing technology landscape is like being a farmer: it's all about managing your silos. Most IT organizations deploy many unique technologies from multiple vendors in an attempt to secure their infrastructure. Each of these technologies generally operates in its own silo, resulting in the duplication of basic functions across multiple appliances in multiple locations in the network. With security automation - enabling information to be shared in real time between heterogeneous collections of appliances - each new component added to the security infrastructure leverages value already in place in the environment. Learn how to deploy a standards-based signaling bus to enable automated, intelligent network security decisions across a variety of technology components such as firewalls, anti-virus, intrusion detection / prevention, web application firewalls, vulnerability scanners, policy servers, CMDBs, SIEM, etc. Leverage metadata accessible through standard APIs that can be accessed for real-time actions and executed by multi-vendor products, including enterprise-specific data if needed. Maximize the value of your existing infrastructure by sharing information for dynamic, real-time visibility and control of your network.

Consumerization has won its first battle with the adoption of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) programs at many enterprises. However, now that iPhones, Android phones and tablets can access data on the corporate network, what can IT do to help bring command and control back to the enterprise? Come hear what current Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions are doing to help enterprises today.

Consumerization has won its first battle with the adoption of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) programs at many enterprises. However, now that iPhones, Android phones and tablets can access data on the corporate network, what can IT do to help bring command and control back to the enterprise? Come hear what current Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions are doing to help enterprises today.

When migrating applications to the cloud, one size does not fit all. Some things work better as infrastructure; some as platform; and some can be replaced by SaaS. But what goes where? In this panel discussion, we'll look at how IT should plan for the migration to cloud platforms.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

For years, IT departments have organized their processes, employees, and business relationships around owning and operating the core IT assets in an enterprise. The current wave of cloud services can have a powerful effect on enterprise IT, with the potential for significant cost savings and operational efficiencies. To achieve these benefits, IT departments will have to integrate new ways of thinking about how IT resources are delivered. In the third part of a series discussing how enterprise IT organizations adopt cloud technologies, Bill Lowry, VP of Cloud Services, will discuss the major factors driving cloud adoption for the enterprise, relate how the adoption of cloud technologies is changing the way IT departments will operate, and review case studies showing how businesses have used cloud services to achieve these benefits.

Rather than attempting to re-invent the wheel, attend this prescriptive session to understand seven key “to-do’s” for your business. This session will prepare you to take full advantage of the cloud and mobility market explosion! Based upon market research and actual partner implementation, attendees will learn the key steps in walking down the correct path of business success in the cloud. We will highlight the following topics:

1. How and Why You Must Create a Practice Statement
2. How to Build a Regular Cadence of Marketing that Addresses the 5 Business Challenges all Businesses Face
3. Why Thought Leadership Creates Gravity Towards Your Solution
4. Building a Velocity and a Volume Sales Process
5. Why Selling Does Change
6. Creating Sales Compensation Planning that Drives Revenue
7. Tips & Tricks to move beyond the “research” and take immediate action to take advantage of the mobility explosion

Personal liability, also known as bring your own device or BYOD, is perhaps the most visible and important trend in mobility today, and one filled simultaneously with the opportunity for cost savings and greater user satisfaction, as well as major challenges for enterprise IT security, integrity, and reliability. This session will explore all aspects of the BYOD trend and phenomenon, and offer practical advice to making BYOD work in your organization.

Our panel of high-level editors and top industry bloggers will reveal how to move beyond Twitter and LinkedIn and have a real impact on the technology landscape. What’s the one guiding principle you must always follow? How do you navigate ethical and FTC considerations? What resources are out there to help you project a professional image? We’ll answer these questions and more.

For over a decade, data center LAN design was largely based on a three-tier switched architecture comprised of access, distribution and core switches. Data center LANs were also based on the use of the spanning tree protocol to ensure a loop-free topology, the use of Ethernet on a best-effort basis, a high over-subscription rate on uplinks and the separation of the data network from the storage network. Now all of these technologies and design assumptions are being questioned.

Increasingly, voice and video communications can be embedded in applications that enterprise users work in throughout the day. This may consist of a plug-in or a presence indicator, from which the user can find and connect with those in their enterprise directory—and potentially even those outside the enterprise (where the two entities’ systems are federated). But are vendors really delivering on the potential of these “Communications Enabled Business Processes” (CEBP), and are enterprises ready to implement such integrations? In this session, you’ll learn how communications systems can be integrated with business applications; what the potential benefits of doing so might be for your enterprise; and how to go about implementing the integration. You’ll learn what it will take to transform this capability from a “nice to have” into a business-critical integration, and how to support these systems once they’re integrated.

In spite of all the hype about “BYOD,” desktop telephones will be the mainstay of many enterprise users for at least the near term—for many job descriptions, there’s simply no need for a change. However, for an increasing number of workers, mobiles and PC/tablet-based softphones are the wave of the future. Chances are, your enterprise will feature a mix of these types of users—traditional phone, PC softphone and mobile. So how do you determine who gets what kind of device? How do you manage and set policy for this multiplicity of devices? And how do you provide the best collaboration experience for the increasing number of users who use multiple types of devices (connecting over multiple types of networks) over the course of a single day? This session will present you with the trends and choices in each area of enterprise communications devices, and will offer a provocative discussion about what works best, and where to place your bets.

It is hard to argue with the success of both public and hybrid cloud computing solutions. It is also hard to argue with the statement that today these solutions are provided primarily on a best effort basis. That means that in the current environment that organizations can only utilize cloud based applications and infrastructure services if the availability and performance of those applications and services is not a critical concern. The panelists in this session will describe both the functionality that currently exists, as well as the functionality that is likely to be implemented within the next year, that you can use to make cloud based services more robust.

Let's not forget that strategies like cloud computing, agile processes, and devops still run on servers, storage, and networking. Many cloud, agile, and devops proponents try to commoditize and minimize the value of underlying hardware, the fact someone still as to build and manage the infrastructure that enable faster, better, and more simpler IT. The technologies that will be used in data centers in the next 12 to 18 months are going to be significantly impacted by what you decide today. New technologies in servers, storage, and networking can have a positive impact regardless of your strategic initiatives. In this panel, we’ll discuss what is on the horizon in data center technologies and how you can leverage them. Bring your questions.

This workshop will explore how an organization should go about choosing and implementing an archiving strategy. We'll look at how you can use software to collect data for the archive from your primary storage systems and at how to build a self-protecting storage system for your archival data.

Click here for more information

Over the past 2-3 years solid state storage has moved from the cutting edge of high performance computing into mainstream data centers speeding workloads from accounts payable to VDI. But solid state disk technology has been advancing rapidly and the simple SLC good, MLC for laptops only rules of a few years ago no longer apply, IT managers have more solid state storage options than they can shake a stick at and need to be able to tell which one is best for their environment. This workshop will bring the solid state storage products on the market into clear focus. By the end of this workshop you’ll know what solid state technologies can best speed your applications and simplify your life.

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Storage continues to evolve to meet the demands of the enterprise. Whether you are supporting big data initiatives, building a private cloud, going to the cloud, or trying to reduce costs and make more efficient use of your existing storage systems, there are many options to choose from. We’ll also get their take on what is coming in the 12-18 months and how to prepare for it. Come prepared with questions as this session will be mostly Q&A driven.

The statement under debate is that cloud storage is dead on arrival. There are a number of benefits with cloud storage like huge cost savings and supporting public cloud applications, but there are also draw back such as governance and the potential for lock-in. In this debate, our panel of experts will be taking one side or the other and in an old-school debate format, will be arguing their respective points. We’ll ask the audience to vote before and after to see who wins. Bring your questions and stump our experts. We’ll have fun and learn something.

The world has changed and technology leadership must change with it. Gone are the days where being a plumber, a mechanic, a project manager, a digital baby sitter for a less-than-tech-savvy senior management team, or a janitor for data messes is enough. The emergent technology leader is an entrepreneur; an innovator; a data scientist; a change agent; an educator; and a diplomat. A new day of technology leadership is upon us. Join the pioneers who are defining the new standard of leadership excellence.

Click here for more information

The world has changed and technology leadership must change with it. Gone are the days where being a plumber, a mechanic, a project manager, a digital baby sitter for a less-than-tech-savvy senior management team, or a janitor for data messes is enough. The emergent technology leader is an entrepreneur; an innovator; a data scientist; a change agent; an educator; and a diplomat. A new day of technology leadership is upon us. Join the pioneers who are defining the new standard of leadership excellence.

Click here for more information

With wireless and mobility now central to the IT strategies – and overall success – of enterprises and other organizations everywhere, the opportunities for the channel in this ever-evolving space have never been greater. And the really good news is that the broad range of requirements for successful mobile operations ensures a prominent role for the channel for the foreseeable future. In this session we’ll examine the core drivers for wireless and mobility today, the key technologies required, and the big questions that continue to demand the attention of IT professionals. While the major themes here will be technologies, products, and services, we’ll also explore the key directions in Wi-Fi, 3G/4G wireless, mobile devices, software strategy, and mobile management requirements, all with an eye towards making the channel more productive than ever.

Key topics include:

•Motivators and market drivers for the continuing expansion of wireless and mobility
•The key technological constraints inherent in wireless
•Wi-Fi: breaking through the gigabit barrier
•Cutting through the 3G and 4G hype: It’s not what you call it, it’s what it can really do
•The mobile device question: what is the ideal mobile arsenal?
•Application strategies: local, Web/cloud, or both?
•Completing the picture: mobile systems management requirements

With so much of the success of wireless and mobility dependent upon advances in technology, we’re kicking off this year’s event with a roundtable plenary session examining key developments in basic wireless technologies and standards, operational and management systems, mobile devices and operating systems, and mobile applications. Our objective is to frame the discussion for the entire Wireless and Mobility track, and to outline key technology directions for enterprises and other organizations for the next five years.

Tablets have taken the IT world by storm, providing a platform that’s convenient, inexpensive, and powerful. But the tablet world is also diverse, rapidly-changing, and challenging for IT operations staff in terms of support, security, and reliability. This session will explore the next steps in the evolution of the tablet, both from a device perspective as well as in terms of operational requirements and optimizing enterprise mobility strategy.

The cellular handset has evolved from voice-centric beginnings to do-it-all mobile powerhouse capable of replacing many other devices. This session will explore what’s next for this vital tool: are we seeing convergence to the PDA form factor, or will alternatives see a resurgence? Will voice technology become the preferred user input methodology? How will advances in basic technologies, including power sources, processors, and local storage, continue to increase the value and utility of the handset?

While it doesn’t receive as much attention in the trade press as does the data center LAN, the campus LAN is also undergoing fundamental change. The drivers of change in the campus network include the requirement to support a significant increase in video traffic, the need to support the movement of virtual machines within the campus data center and the burgeoning movement to bring your own device (BYOD). The panelists in this session will discuss technologies and design options that you can use to redesign your campus LANs.

The world has changed and technology leadership must change with it. Gone are the days where being a plumber, a mechanic, a project manager, a digital baby sitter for a less-than-tech-savvy senior management team, or a janitor for data messes is enough. The emergent technology leader is an entrepreneur; an innovator; a data scientist; a change agent; an educator; and a diplomat. A new day of technology leadership is upon us. Join the pioneers who are defining the new standard of leadership excellence.

Click here for more information

The world has changed and technology leadership must change with it. Gone are the days where being a plumber, a mechanic, a project manager, a digital baby sitter for a less-than-tech-savvy senior management team, or a janitor for data messes is enough. The emergent technology leader is an entrepreneur; an innovator; a data scientist; a change agent; an educator; and a diplomat. A new day of technology leadership is upon us. Join the pioneers who are defining the new standard of leadership excellence.

Click here for more information

Cloud’s Silver Screen Debut: How HP & DreamWorks Animation Brought Cloud Computing to the Red Carpet

To date cloud networking discussions have focused mainly on how to solve the problems of scale and virtualization in the data center. There has been little conversation about how services are accessed or consumed from the Cloud. How can customers focus less on managing the network infrastructure and more on connecting users to applications? How can they use standards-based technology to simplify the network and lower the total cost of ownership? How can they deliver new services on-the-fly while guaranteeing service levels required for cloud computing?

DreamWorks Animation will partner on stage with HP to share their compelling case study of leveraging HP and the Cloud to revolutionize the way they collaborate across multiple geographies to produce massive compute-intensive animated films such as Puss in Boots, Kung Fu Panda 2 and Madagascar 3.

Join us for an interactive discussion where you’ll learn how 1.8M IT pros in Spiceworks plan to spend their $325B+ collective budget.

• Hear IT pros’ plans for cloud computing, virtualization and mobility

• Get insights on top priorities for IT spending, staffing and adoption

• Take away “Do’s/Don’ts” for engaging IT across social channels and marketplaces

Have you ever wondered why Amazon Web Services and other Cloud providers allow free inbound data? Or why Amazon EC2 East is full? These and many other examples are based on the effects of a concept known as Data Gravity. Data Gravity exists inside of the Enterprises too, which means it is already likely effecting you (you may just not realize it). Find out how the concept of Data Gravity explains many of the behaviors and trends occurring today both in the Cloud and behind the firewall.

Every year, humanity generates more information than before. We're only now learning how to harness it, putting powerful new processing architectures to work to glean insights from the petabytes of data we have on customers, markets, competitors, and employees. For IT this means two things: a new role as the go-to analyst in charge of crunching this information, and a new set of architectures that can store and crunch all of the information while staying within the law.

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This session focuses on how enterprises can maintain business continuity regardless of the Internet Protocol their customers use. Included in the session will be design and deployment recommendations for deploying IPv6 in the enterprise Internet Edge.

New software offers enterprises the ability to monitor social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, to stay on top of public perceptions and mentions of their brands. Increasingly, enterprises want to integrate these social sites with their customer contact operations; they’d also like to be able use social networking sites as direct channels of communications into the contact center. In this session, we’ll examine how much progress is really being made toward this integration of social networks with enterprise customer contact. We’ll discuss what’s available to effect the integration of the systems, and what you can do with the information once it begins flowing into the customer care operation. You’ll come away with the essentials that will help you make customer contact via social networks a reality, and one that integrates seamlessly with your existing contact center operation.

Learn how Dell’s new OpenManage 5.0 can simplify the management of the entire line of Dell networking products. The session covers a series of common networking management challenges including:

• Analyzing the Traffic Patterns and Layout of your Network
• Managing Automated Upgrades
• Locating Bottlenecks
• Tracking and Identifying Excessive Data Users

Each scenario will feature a live demonstration of how each challenge can be solved through the use of Dell OpenManage Network Manager 5.0.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

In just a little over a year, OpenStack has become the fastest growing open source platform ever and the hype matches its speed of growth. With the OpenStack community made up of public cloud, hosted private cloud and private cloud providers, one is left to wonder what it truly means to be OpenStack? In this interactive, moderated discussion, panelists will provide their perspective on this question, while debating the merits of various cloud computing models in order to help answer the question of “how open is too open?”

Moving beyond server consolidation to an agile virtual infrastructure to a private cloud is a top priority for most organizations, but not an easy road. Getting there successfully means addressing a variety of management issues -- automating virtual operations and provisioning; managing performance and capacity; troubleshooting across the virtual and physical infrastructure; lifecycle management; and eventually managing across multiple hypervisors. Hear experiences and best practices on how layering the right management capabilities onto your virtual environment will improve your IT operations and transform your environment into a private cloud.

Building private clouds requires a combination of virtualization, optimization, automation, monitoring/management, self-service portals, and service catalogs. In this panel, we'll discuss the building blocks and best practices for successfully building private clouds, and the options IT has today to turn their data centers into on-demand computing resources for their organization.

Private clouds have come a long way from their humble beginnings in virtualization. Today's enterprise IT professionals can create rich on-premise, automated, self-service, shared computing offerings for their stakeholders. Private clouds begin with foundations like VMware, Xen, Hyper-V and KVM; and now include optimized infrastructure, advanced management, automation and orchestration, and cloud stacks like OpenStack, CloudStack, Nimbula, and Eucalyuptus. And of course, there are also service catalogs, charge-back, and self-service interfaces that let IT get out of the way of delivering to service consumers.

Click here for more information

To reap the benefits of cloud computing, IT has to do more than just give its users self-service machines. It needs to build services around key functions like storage, authentication, and messaging. We talk a lot about service-centric IT, but do we really know what it means? In this panel, we'll discuss the services enterprises can offer—both on-premise and off—that get away from server- and machine-centric thinking, and focus on building great businesses.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

How can enterprise companies bridge the gap between their current, dedicated IT infrastructure and cloud? Which option is best: In-house IT, Hosting, Private Cloud, or Public Cloud? How about all of them? Because Hybrid Clouds can offer significant advantages to their users, this technology has become the solution of choice for a growing number of Enterprise businesses. Attendees can expect to learn more about how they can start building their own bridge to the cloud.

Even as wireless now dominates the edge of the enterprise networks, wire is taking on new roles in backhaul, interconnect, and in provisioning ever-more capacity for next-generation wireless LANs. It therefore makes sense to manage wired and wireless networks together as a single entity. But, it’s fair to ask, how much compromise is required here? Can unified networking implementations be cost-effectively managed? And what challenges remain?

Wireless is the new access. Your employees and guests want bring their own devices, connect to your network, and access services. They demand rich experience. You want to provide access in a reliable, secure and simplified way. In this session, we will explore how Dell’s networking solutions will help you to meet BYOD demands and provide seamless Unified Communications experience over wireless.

This session will discuss why so many IT organizations are getting "blind sided" by breaches and security incidents, in spite of a large investment in security technology. But, more importantly, this will be a discussion of some best known methods for approaches and techniques to minimize the chance that you will experience a breach without detecting it and be able to quickly assess the impact when an attack (from any source) impacts your data assets and IT infrastructure. Learn about industry guidance and best practices for IT security.

The spanning tree protocol (STP) has been a mainstay of LAN design for well over a decade. One of the advantages of STP is that it ensures a loop-free topology for any bridged Ethernet local area network. One of the primary drawbacks of STP is that it only allows for a single active path between any two network nodes and that attribute of STP can severely limit the scalability of the LAN. The panelists on this session will debate the best alternatives to STP. Alternatives will include standards based approaches such as Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation Group, Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) and TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) as well as at least one proprietary approach.

The good news is that it is now possible to move virtual machines (VMs) between physical servers in a matter of seconds. The bad news is that while computing has become virtual and dynamic, most network infrastructures are still largely physical and static. As a result, it can take days to manually configure parameters such as QoS settings and ACLs in order to support the dynamic movement of VMs. The panelists in this session will identify the techniques such as VXLAN that you can implement to seamlessly move VMs between servers.

Recent waves of innovation have unleashed a flood of data into the enterprise. In search of higher ground, enterprises are turning to developers for ways to better use and monetize this data. Luminary on APIs and Digital Strategist, Laura Merling, explores how enterprises must use their data infrastructure to establish a platform on which developers can create new services and deliver them to market. By implementing a platform model, enterprises are able to centralize data relationships and allow for improved analysis and access by developers. The result will find enterprises creating and engaging in new business models and unlocking increased revenue opportunities.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

Huge revenue, customer acquisition and retention, and brand credibility implications are riding on the ability of Service Providers to leverage their data center and IP infrastructure to deliver profitable network-based IT services. The Carrier Cloud Forum will provide high-quality education and peer-to-peer interaction on building a cloud infrastructure that is manageable and billable, ensuring high-performance security and service quality to meet SLA demands, recognizing best practices for packaging and monetizing XaaS services and applications, and learning what works and what does not for vertical industry customization.

Click here for more information

It is hard to argue with the success of both public and hybrid cloud computing solutions. It is also hard to argue with the statement that today these solutions are provided primarily on a best effort basis. That means that in the current environment that organizations can only utilize cloud based applications and infrastructure services if the availability and performance of those applications and services is not a critical concern. The panelists in this session will describe both the functionality that currently exists, as well as the functionality that is likely to be implemented within the next year, that you can use to make cloud based services more robust.

While it doesn’t receive as much attention in the trade press as does the data center LAN, the campus LAN is also undergoing fundamental change. The drivers of change in the campus network include the requirement to support a significant increase in video traffic, the need to support the movement of virtual machines within the campus data center and the burgeoning movement to bring your own device (BYOD). The panelists in this session will discuss technologies and design options that you can use to redesign your campus LANs.

One of the key underlying concepts of a software defined network (SDN) is that the switch control plane is decoupled from the data plane and placed in a separate centralized server or controller. This centralization of the control plane makes it relatively easy to programmatically control the entire network. OpenFlow is an open API/protocol that is used between a network controller and a controlled physical switch that provides the forwarding hardware.

For over a decade, data center LAN design was largely based on a three-tier switched architecture comprised of access, distribution and core switches. Data center LANs were also based on the use of the spanning tree protocol to ensure a loop-free topology, the use of Ethernet on a best-effort basis, a high over-subscription rate on uplinks and the separation of the data network from the storage network. Now all of these technologies and design assumptions are being questioned.

The media is overflowing with discussions of the benefits of adopting cloud computing and enabling technologies such as virtualization. What has been missing from that discussion is an analysis of what has to happen to the network and the management of the network to enable them to support cloud computing. For example, the deployment of vSwitches will potentially result in IT organizations having to manage hundreds of new switches from multiple vendors. In addition, today’s WAN can’t effectively support the dynamic movement of VMs nor cloud bursting and most management tools and processes are focused on static not dynamic resources. In this session, Jim Metzler of Ashton, Metzler & Associates will describe in detail the set of challenges created by cloud computing and will also provide an overview of the emerging networking, optimization and management technologies that hold the potential to mitigate these challenges.

The spanning tree protocol (STP) has been a mainstay of LAN design for well over a decade. One of the advantages of STP is that it ensures a loop-free topology for any bridged Ethernet local area network. One of the primary drawbacks of STP is that it only allows for a single active path between any two network nodes and that attribute of STP can severely limit the scalability of the LAN. The panelists on this session will debate the best alternatives to STP. Alternatives will include standards based approaches such as Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation Group, Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) and TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) as well as at least one proprietary approach.

For well over a decade most IT infrastructures have relied on physical appliances including physical routers, WAN optimization controllers (WOCs) and application delivery controllers (ADCs). However, over the last few years, an increasing number of virtualized appliances have entered the marketplace. These appliances have the potential to provide dramatically lower cost and dramatically increase agility. That raises the question: Is there any longer a need for physical appliances? The panelists on this session will take opposing views on this question and will provide you the information you need to determine what makes the most sense in your environment.

There is growing pressure on IT organizations to support the movement of large files between data centers, to improve the performance of web-based applications, to support mobile workers and initiatives such as desktop virtualization. Venture capitalists and others have been funding significant investments in a wide range of optimization technologies and services to respond to these requirements. The panelists in this session will discuss some of the most promising new developments relative to optimizing network and application performance.

The consolidation of applications and servers out of branch offices and into centralized data centers has driven an increased amount of delay sensitive traffic over the WAN. Now the WAN is being challenged to support the adoption of desktop virtualization, the dynamic movement of VMs and to enable both SaaS and IaaS. Unfortunately the WAN does not follow Moore’s law and so it is not experiencing the same type of price reduction as is computing and storage resources. The panelists in this fast-paced session will discuss some of the most promising emerging WAN technologies and services that you can utilize to successfully support emerging requirements.

A number of vendors have either deployed solutions, or have pre-announced solutions that enable IT organizations to converge their storage, servers and networking. This raises some two fundamental questions. One question is exactly why would IT organizations want to do that. The second question is, assuming that they do want to, how do they go about evaluating solutions and once they do, how do they go about implementing and managing the solution? The panelists in this session will answer those questions and position you to create your convergence strategy.

The vast majority of IT organizations are in the process of re-designing their data center LANs. Most likely the best approach for IT organizations to take is a continuation of what they have always done. But what if it isn’t? What if the best approach is something very different? Recently OpenFlow and Software Defined Networks have been getting a lot of attention as providing an alternative approach to network design. The panelists in this session will discuss those techniques. Are they the same thing with different names? What specific problems are solved by these techniques and when will they become mainstream solutions?

The good news is that it is now possible to move virtual machines (VMs) between physical servers in a matter of seconds. The bad news is that while computing has become virtual and dynamic, most network infrastructures are still largely physical and static. As a result, it can take days to manually configure parameters such as QoS settings and ACLs in order to support the dynamic movement of VMs. The panelists in this session will identify the techniques such as VXLAN that you can implement to seamlessly move VMs between servers.

For small and medium businesses throughout the world, NETGEAR works with over 36,000 value-added resellers to provide advanced networking, storage and security solutions without the cost and complexity of big IT.

The world economy is in flux. Customers are demanding lower costs and higher flexibility in IT provisioning, and the industry has combatted these demands with cloud computing technology. Cloud adoption is at an all-time high with spending projected to reach $100B by 2014 according to AMI research, and one-third of SMBs preferring hybrid cloud models. However, as adoption increases and security risks multiply, are hybrid solutions the most beneficial for SMBs? If so, what are the realities of addressing mobile users and remote location collaboration challenges with a hybrid cloud solution?

The presentation will discuss:

• How the explosion of cloud computing impacts storage and security
• Real world examples and case studies of how integrated solutions have impacted SMBs
• Where integrated solutions are headed and the future of the cloud for midmarket companies
  

Wireless networks – both local and wide area – have seen a usage explosion over the past several years with tidal waves of smartphones, tablets, and other devices entering the market. Not only do we see much higher densities of devices, but these devices consume much more data – 5-10X more – than those commonly used just a few years ago. This session will dive into the implications of this growth on the operation of local area wireless networks, and address the changes in approach needed to handle growth today and into the future.

With so much of the success of wireless and mobility dependent upon advances in technology, we’re kicking off this year’s event with a roundtable plenary session examining key developments in basic wireless technologies and standards, operational and management systems, mobile devices and operating systems, and mobile applications. Our objective is to frame the discussion for the entire Wireless and Mobility track, and to outline key technology directions for enterprises and other organizations for the next five years.

Storage continues to evolve to meet the demands of the enterprise. Whether you are supporting big data initiatives, building a private cloud, going to the cloud, or trying to reduce costs and make more efficient use of your existing storage systems, there are many options to choose from. We’ll also get their take on what is coming in the 12-18 months and how to prepare for it. Come prepared with questions as this session will be mostly Q&A driven.

Everyone talks about big data, but big data isn’t really useful unless you can use it. What you need are big decisions. In this session, you will learn what constitutes big data, best practices to store it for retrieval, and how to use it to make business decisions. We will include a few case studies illustrating key points and provide a starting point on how to use big data to make big decisions.

Wi-Fi has secured its position as the primary, default, and certainly preferred access vehicle for users everywhere. But even with market dominance and an installed base in the billions, industry standards and specifications continue to evolve at a rapid pace. This session will discuss the latest developments in wireless-LAN technology, including gigabit technologies, new frequency bands, advances in public access systems, and new specs from the Wi-Fi Alliance. We’ll also look at how these innovations will appear in enterprise-class systems (and when), and outline an action plan for the next wave of enterprise deployments.

The definition of the “desktop” is changing. The workforce is increasingly mobile, and there is a plethora of choices – tablets, smartphones, thin/zero clients, client hypervisors, virtual desktops, hosted applications, cloud-based services – available now with even more options coming. The term 'desktop' is becoming a metaphor for the collective devices, applications, services and content to which users subscribe both within the enterprise and in the cloud. Hear our roundtable of industry visionaries discuss the desktop of the future and the future of the desktop, and how you should prepare your infrastructure for what's next.

Beyond Networking – Dell Solving Tough IT Challenges from End-to-End

We at Dell dream big. Our customers do too. They are doing amazing, transformative things like accelerating and personalizing medical research, bringing technology into the classroom to help improve education, or running social networks that change the way all interact. Come see how we’re helping them with some of their toughest IT challenges.

Social networking is the primary activity of mobile users and one of the leading points of entry for web-based malware. As businesses adopt BYOD initiatives, they are also inadvertently creating new entry points into the corporate network for web-based threats. To protect sensitive data and intellectual property, businesses need to maintain control over all devices accessing the network, regardless of location. This session will examine strategies for ensuring BYOD initiatives are effectively implemented within an overall security strategy.

There is growing pressure on IT organizations to support the movement of large files between data centers, to improve the performance of web-based applications, to support mobile workers and initiatives such as desktop virtualization. Venture capitalists and others have been funding significant investments in a wide range of optimization technologies and services to respond to these requirements. The panelists in this session will discuss some of the most promising new developments relative to optimizing network and application performance.

Learn how Dell’s new OpenManage 5.0 can simplify the management of the entire line of Dell networking products. The session covers a series of common networking management challenges including:

• Analyzing the Traffic Patterns and Layout of your Network
• Managing Automated Upgrades
• Locating Bottlenecks
• Tracking and Identifying Excessive Data Users

Each scenario will feature a live demonstration of how each challenge can be solved through the use of Dell OpenManage Network Manager 5.0.

Our panel of high-level editors and top industry bloggers will reveal how to move beyond Twitter and LinkedIn and have a real impact on the technology landscape. What’s the one guiding principle you must always follow? How do you navigate ethical and FTC considerations? What resources are out there to help you project a professional image? We’ll answer these questions and more.

The Cloud is starting to drive significant disruption in the IT outsourcing (ITO) and managed services markets. Enterprise CIOs dissatisfied with their traditional service providers are actively seeking to ways to ‘move out’ to the public cloud, and ‘move up’ to provide next generation platforms and services. In this session we’ll share global trends and case examples of enterprise CIOs who are actively moving their organizations away from traditional managed services and IT outsourcing to next generation, cloud-enabled delivery models.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

While it doesn’t receive as much attention in the trade press as does the data center LAN, the campus LAN is also undergoing fundamental change. The drivers of change in the campus network include the requirement to support a significant increase in video traffic, the need to support the movement of virtual machines within the campus data center and the burgeoning movement to bring your own device (BYOD). The panelists in this session will discuss technologies and design options that you can use to redesign your campus LANs.

For over a decade, data center LAN design was largely based on a three-tier switched architecture comprised of access, distribution and core switches. Data center LANs were also based on the use of the spanning tree protocol to ensure a loop-free topology, the use of Ethernet on a best-effort basis, a high over-subscription rate on uplinks and the separation of the data network from the storage network. Now all of these technologies and design assumptions are being questioned.

IP video surveillance is inevitable but there is good news: it’s established, effective and manageable. The physical security industry is expected to deploy IP video surveillance in a majority of all projects by the year 2020, and IT professionals will soon add surveillance data management to their list of responsibilities. This session outlines the basics of working with IP video surveillance and provides steps to adhere to both physical and logical security standards.

Steve Orrin, Senior Security Architect for Intel Corp.

Concerns about inadequate information security remains the #1 obstacle to greater adoption of Cloud Computing. Organizations building Private Clouds, and deploying their applications and data to them, need the ability to assess security standards, trust security implementations, and prove infrastructure compliance to auditors. This session will describe some of the security risks and challenges when adopting private architectures and strategies. and will provide guidance for mitigating risk and adopting solutions that enable trust and compliance, including an overview of the ecosystem landscape for Private Cloud Security detailing key categories and solution stacks.

Private clouds have come a long way from their humble beginnings in virtualization. Today's enterprise IT professionals can create rich on-premise, automated, self-service, shared computing offerings for their stakeholders. Private clouds begin with foundations like VMware, Xen, Hyper-V and KVM; and now include optimized infrastructure, advanced management, automation and orchestration, and cloud stacks like OpenStack, CloudStack, Nimbula, and Eucalyuptus. And of course, there are also service catalogs, charge-back, and self-service interfaces that let IT get out of the way of delivering to service consumers.

Click here for more information

Are the days of buying separate server, storage and networking components coming to an end? Systems architectures are being re-invented, with network and storage resources becoming integrated into the same package so that they can be managed together more efficiently. Two years on from the first product launches, the concept of system convergence is starting to catch on with real customers, especially service providers offering Cloud-based services and enterprises implementing private Clouds. It’s a good time to assess how things are panning out and what course they are likely to take over the next 12 to 18 months.

Is converged infrastructure right for you? Come hear from 451 Group analysts and leading converged infrastructure vendors in this panel to better understand the converged infrastructure phenomenon, drill into the taxonomy, and talk real-world deployments of various approaches to assess what makes sense for your organization. We'll discuss approaches from vendors (panel suggestions: - Cisco, VCE, Netapp, HP and start-up Nutanix), across different use cases and organization sizes with technical leaders from these vendors in an interactive panel-style discussion.

The definition of the ‘desktop’ is changing in many ways. The term 'desktop' is becoming a metaphor for the collective devices, applications, services and content to which users subscribe, both within the enterprise and in the cloud. Virtualization technologies have expanded and improved, offering better ways to deliver both desktops and applications, ranging from VDI to session virtualization to streamed desktops to client hypervisors to Desktop as a Service. New devices continue to emerge and proliferate (including tablets, smartphones, thin clients, and zero clients) and Bring Your Own Computer/Device (BYOC/BYOD) initiatives are gaining ground. As organizations consider the best strategy for delivering and supporting desktops and applications for the next decade, while addressing near-term issues like Windows 7, IT has the opportunity to change the paradigm for delivering access to different users from any device anywhere.

Click here for more information

Multivendor interoperability is a key part of any Unified Communications implementation. Few enterprises will get all of their UC infrastructure and applications from a single vendor. In addition, UC delivers value through integration with business processes, which requires interoperation with other software applications (e.g. document creation and management; for sales, services, logistics; et al.).

Vendors are addressing interoperation in varying degrees and at varying rates, depending on the markets they serve and on their cultures of openness vs. self-sufficiency. This session will help you understand how the vendors are positioning themselves with regard to interoperability, and how that should affect your planning.

Increasingly, voice and video communications can be embedded in applications that enterprise users work in throughout the day. This may consist of a plug-in or a presence indicator, from which the user can find and connect with those in their enterprise directory—and potentially even those outside the enterprise (where the two entities’ systems are federated). But are vendors really delivering on the potential of these “Communications Enabled Business Processes” (CEBP), and are enterprises ready to implement such integrations? In this session, you’ll learn how communications systems can be integrated with business applications; what the potential benefits of doing so might be for your enterprise; and how to go about implementing the integration. You’ll learn what it will take to transform this capability from a “nice to have” into a business-critical integration, and how to support these systems once they’re integrated.

When migrating applications to the cloud, one size does not fit all. Some things work better as infrastructure; some as platform; and some can be replaced by SaaS. But what goes where? In this panel discussion, we'll look at how IT should plan for the migration to cloud platforms.

Cloud computing isn't about managing boxes more efficiently, it's about making the organization more effective. While early cloud adoption has focused on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), tomorrow's clouds will hide the boxes. Instead, they'll make it easy for developers to create powerful applications quickly, by wrapping applications in services. Tomorrow, IT doesn't run machines—it manages platforms, both public and private.

Click here for more information

Join this session to learn the value of PCIe SSD solutions in the data center. The session will address markets that benefit from tiered storage, implementation process, and success one can expect.

The ability to dynamically morph data center resources to satisfy transient user demands – whether the business is a large enterprise or a cloud service provider – is no longer the stuff of science fiction. Hear about technologies that are bringing fluidity to Application Delivery and Security fabric. When virtualizing network and server resources, gain an appreciation for the steps that should be taken to optimize the agility and resilience of cloud-enabled data center infrastructure.

At some point, every voice, video, and data packet that is being transferred across the network is passing over Ethernet links and through Ethernet Switches. If these technologies are not working properly, the result will be poor voice quality and slow applications. In this session we will look at the operation of Ethernet and the factors that can impact its performance. We will cover a number of tools and techniques for ensuring your Ethernet network is performing as it should.

Click here for more information

Before we can begin troubleshooting problems, we need some tools. In this class we will look a number of Open Source tools that will help you quickly isolate and troubleshoot a variety of network problems. A reference CD will be provided containing the tools covered in this class as well as example trace files to be used in the class.

Click here for more information

Once the lower layers are operating properly, it is time to focus our attention on the Network and Transport layers. As with the lower layers, if these layers of the OSI model are not operating properly, applications will appear slow or non-responsive. In this class we will look at the operation of the Internet Protocol and the Transmission Control Protocol. Specifically, we will look at a number of techniques for isolating problems and improving network throughput.

Click here for more information

Whether it is 802.11a, b, g, or n, wireless networks are an integral part of the network infrastructure. When the wireless network is not operating a peak performance or is down, it needs to be fixed and fixed quickly. In this class we will cover the operation of a healthy wireless network and the factors that can impact the performance. A variety of tools and techniques will be covered, showing how they can be used to determine the health of the wireless network and pinpoint problems.

Click here for more information

This series of classes in designed to provide the network administrator/analyst the information and skills necessary to troubleshoot those technologies found in virtually every networking environment. Real life examples will be provided throughout the classes. The course material will contain reference material that can be used as part of the troubleshooting process. Where possible, hands-on exercises will be incorporated to help reinforce the class content.

Workshops in this series:
-Wireshark and Other Open Source Tools
-Practical Ethernet and Switched Network Troubleshooting
-Practical Wireless Troubleshooting
-Practical IP and TCP Troubleshooting

Let's not forget that strategies like cloud computing, agile processes, and devops still run on servers, storage, and networking. Many cloud, agile, and devops proponents try to commoditize and minimize the value of underlying hardware, the fact someone still as to build and manage the infrastructure that enable faster, better, and more simpler IT. The technologies that will be used in data centers in the next 12 to 18 months are going to be significantly impacted by what you decide today. New technologies in servers, storage, and networking can have a positive impact regardless of your strategic initiatives. In this panel, we’ll discuss what is on the horizon in data center technologies and how you can leverage them. Bring your questions.

Modeling your business requirements and associated system loads gives key information for building and managing successful Enterprise operations. Knowing what you want out of the system - your business information needs and the technology required to satisfy those needs - is the formula for business success. Few managers clearly understand how these pieces fit together (business process and technology). Technology keeps changing - and we will always be learning. Capacity Planning models provide a framework to identify what you know about your business workflows, and link what you know to the right technology required to support your business needs.

Proper hardware platform selection can significantly reduce implementation risk. Attendee will receive Capacity Planning Tools (CPT) enabling them to model their existing and future data center environment. The CPT analysis translates processing loads on the existing hardware infrastructure to predicted throughput and utilization on the upgraded platform solution. Presentation will review capacity planning fundamentals (user requirements, network suitability analysis, platform sizing) and demonstrate how Capacity Planning Tools can be used to perform the design analysis. Online sites will be shared for free documentation and CPT updates.

Creating a risk conscious and security aware culture within an organization can provide more protection to an organization’s information infrastructure and associated data assets than any technology or information security related control that currently exists. A risk conscious security aware culture is key to protecting an organization’s information infrastructure and associated data assets. Information threats and adversaries are more advanced and daunting than ever and show no sign of becoming less concerning in the future. In order to effectively address this issue, organizations must create and cultivate a culture and environment that embraces information risk management and security as a business benefit rather than another hurdle on the path to success. This session will focus on the key concepts and capabilities that should be considered when creating a risk aware and security conscious culture.

Personal liability, also known as bring your own device or BYOD, is perhaps the most visible and important trend in mobility today, and one filled simultaneously with the opportunity for cost savings and greater user satisfaction, as well as major challenges for enterprise IT security, integrity, and reliability. This session will explore all aspects of the BYOD trend and phenomenon, and offer practical advice to making BYOD work in your organization.

New purpose-built, cloud-based WAN optimization and application acceleration solutions are now enabling today’s globally distributed enterprise to bring all resources worldwide together on one single optimized transport platform – without the need for hardware. Resources can be in branches, large sites, DC, private, public and hybrid clouds. Attendees will learn how mobile workers can benefit from LAN-like performance across a wide area network as they access centralized resources, regardless where they are physically located. Enabling simpler IT.

A couple of years ago building an application meant building the infrastructure to support the application. Typically this entailed installing a database, an app server and often a messaging server and email server; all tedious preamble for actually building an application. Now you have free access to these infrastructure services on the web, This session will explain the impact of cloud services on the IT landscape and how the roles of developers and operations are
colliding.

Enterprise networks are facing a perfect storm of challenges resulting from the pressure and strain to support the explosion of new devices and applications that are being used/deployed in the network. IT Consumerization & BYOD, with smart devices such as ipads and tablets, coupled with increased reliance on social networks, VoIP, collaboration tools and unified communications mean that legacy networks are no longer able to cope with the increase in demand for bandwidth. Join Alcatel-Lucent to understand these challenges and how to effectively re-think the network to provide the high-quality user-experience needed to maximize the productivity-enhancing capabilities of these new devices and applications.

Every year, humanity generates more information than before. We're only now learning how to harness it, putting powerful new processing architectures to work to glean insights from the petabytes of data we have on customers, markets, competitors, and employees. For IT this means two things: a new role as the go-to analyst in charge of crunching this information, and a new set of architectures that can store and crunch all of the information while staying within the law.

Click here for more information

Big Data and High Performance Computing (HPC) are more than just buzz words. Thousands of companies today are using big data analytics to learn from their customer behavior and differentiate their products. Insights derived from big data analytics is enabling new innovators to disrupt a growing number of industries, including media/advertising, retail, gaming, health care, and financial services. Learn how AWS enables anyone to take advantage of big data analytics using scalable computing resources, storage services, databases and analytics tools. We'll outline the full pipeline, from data collection and storage, to computational modeling and risk analysis, through to data locality and private collaboration. Using real world use cases we'll illustrate how services such as Elastic MapReduce, the Virtual Private Cloud, DynamoDB, RDS and the AWS Storage Gateway can help you analyze your data and gain competitive advantage.

There is growing pressure on IT organizations to support the movement of large files between data centers, to improve the performance of web-based applications, to support mobile workers and initiatives such as desktop virtualization. Venture capitalists and others have been funding significant investments in a wide range of optimization technologies and services to respond to these requirements. The panelists in this session will discuss some of the most promising new developments relative to optimizing network and application performance.

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Application Driven Networking: Practical or Pipe Dream?

Applications, devices, and networks have all seemingly advanced separately since their inception. Trends such as consumerization of IT, business collaboration, and cloud computing beckon deeper, more proactive integration. Is greater synergy even practical? And if so, is it possible? Listen to industry veteran Marc Randall outline the potential advantages and architecture of an application driven network.

This two day tutorial focuses on specific steps you can take to improve the effectiveness of your IT organization and ensure alignment with the business you support. We will focus on critical policy areas and the translation of those policies into standard operating procedure through the development and implementation of core ITIL processes. In an environment of constant change, IT accountability has taken on new levels of urgency. IT departments regularly struggle with staffing levels, turnover, burnout, lack of credibility, or end-user and managerial dissatisfaction. If you're questioning how to satisfy the end user, control or cut costs, determine the best sourcing options by category of work effort, and still offer a balanced and fulfilling career progression to IT professional staff, we have answers for you. Most importantly, over the 15 years this course has been offered at Interop, we have learned how to engage you and your fellow classmates to help each other through sharing what is working and why.

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This two day tutorial focuses on specific steps you can take to improve the effectiveness of your IT organization and ensure alignment with the business you support. We will focus on critical policy areas and the translation of those policies into standard operating procedure through the development and implementation of core ITIL processes. In an environment of constant change, IT accountability has taken on new levels of urgency. IT departments regularly struggle with staffing levels, turnover, burnout, lack of credibility, or end-user and managerial dissatisfaction. If you're questioning how to satisfy the end user, control or cut costs, determine the best sourcing options by category of work effort, and still offer a balanced and fulfilling career progression to IT professional staff, we have answers for you. Most importantly, over the 15 years this course has been offered at Interop, we have learned how to engage you and your fellow classmates to help each other through sharing what is working and why.

Click here for more information

A number of vendors have either deployed solutions, or have pre-announced solutions that enable IT organizations to converge their storage, servers and networking. This raises some two fundamental questions. One question is exactly why would IT organizations want to do that. The second question is, assuming that they do want to, how do they go about evaluating solutions and once they do, how do they go about implementing and managing the solution? The panelists in this session will answer those questions and position you to create your convergence strategy.

Successful mobile operations include demands beyond a personal-liability policy and even another key requirement, mobile device management. The complete solution, often called Enterprise Mobility Management, includes policy, expense, and applications management solutions, as well as integration with other operational IT systems. This session will examine the requirements and help define a strategy to ensure mobile success.

While one is never “done” when it comes to security, successful strategies for mobile security are now in place at many organizations. But with new challenges appearing on an almost daily basis, viable security implementations require a combination of tools, techniques, and best practices in order to achieve their vital mission. This session will present an outline of security challenges and how these can be optimally addressed in a mobile environment.

One of the key underlying concepts of a software defined network (SDN) is that the switch control plane is decoupled from the data plane and placed in a separate centralized server or controller. This centralization of the control plane makes it relatively easy to programmatically control the entire network. OpenFlow is an open API/protocol that is used between a network controller and a controlled physical switch that provides the forwarding hardware.