Interop Business Technology Conference

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.

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.

The rapid adoption of cloud-based services complementing established IT infrastructure & business services poses a set of new integration challenges in the resulting Hybrid Cloud constellations. Cloud adopters need Integration Services to connect existing information and application assets to cloud based counterparts, establish integration between cloud based services in public or private clouds and want to consume the underlying integration services in a cloud form factor. The presentation will describe key dimensions of Hybrid Cloud Integration, discuss use cases and explain how to build out a coherent cloud integration fabric across traditionally deployed services, private clouds and into public clouds.

Speaker - Rishi Vaish, Vice President Engineering and CTO, Cast Iron Systems, an IBM Company

Rishi is the CTO for cloud integration at IBM. He is responsible for vision, strategy and architecture of the IBM suite of products that solve application, platform and infrastructure integration in a hybrid cloud world. Prior to this role, Rishi was the Vice President of Engineering and Product Management at Cast Iron Systems, acquired by IBM, responsible for all activities related to development, operations and product management for the Cast Iron Suite of products. He has also held senior engineering roles at Teamscape Inc, an Enterprise Learning Management Platform acquired by PeopleSoft/Oracle, at WebSwap Inc., a Sequoia funded e-commerce site, and at Tata Share Registry Limited, a financial services company for India’s premier business house, the Tata Group of companies. Rishi holds a Bachelor of Technology degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi, India.

Uncertainty. Risk. Organizational change. For many enterprises, those are just a few of the realities they encounter while implementing their agile IT and cloud computing strategies. You need to know the security, operational, and governance hurdles you may face once you have convinced your organization to pursue the agility and economic benefits of cloud. Don’t fret, many of these threats can be avoided.

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.

Speaker - Barb Goldworm, President and Chief Analyst, FOCUS

Barb Goldworm has spent 30 years in systems and storage in various senior management, marketing, sales, technical and industry analyst positions with IBM, StorageTek, Novell, Enterprise Management Associates and several successful startup ventures. A frequent speaker at industry events, she also created and chaired Interop’s Network Storage Track. More recently, she was one of the top 3 ranked analyst/ knowledge expert speakers at SNW and has been a regular expert speaker for TechTarget Webcasts and Ziff-Davis Summits and E-seminars. She also chaired the 2007 Server Blade Summit on Blades and Virtualization. Barb has published extensively since the 1990s, writing regular columns for Network World and ComputerWorld, as well as numerous business and technical white papers and articles on systems, software, storage, storage networking and enterprise management. She currently writes a regular column for TechTarget SearchServerVirtualization. In 2007, she published a book entitled "Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs" commissioned by Wiley, available on Amazon.com. Barb brings a unique blend of marketing and technical depth, both strategic and tactical, with experience in product management, product marketing, sales, market research, software development, project management and education.

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.

Moderator - Barb Goldworm, President and Chief Analyst, FOCUS

Barb Goldworm has spent 30 years in systems and storage in various senior management, marketing, sales, technical and industry analyst positions with IBM, StorageTek, Novell, Enterprise Management Associates and several successful startup ventures. A frequent speaker at industry events, she also created and chaired Interop’s Network Storage Track. More recently, she was one of the top 3 ranked analyst/ knowledge expert speakers at SNW and has been a regular expert speaker for TechTarget Webcasts and Ziff-Davis Summits and E-seminars. She also chaired the 2007 Server Blade Summit on Blades and Virtualization. Barb has published extensively since the 1990s, writing regular columns for Network World and ComputerWorld, as well as numerous business and technical white papers and articles on systems, software, storage, storage networking and enterprise management. She currently writes a regular column for TechTarget SearchServerVirtualization. In 2007, she published a book entitled "Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs" commissioned by Wiley, available on Amazon.com. Barb brings a unique blend of marketing and technical depth, both strategic and tactical, with experience in product management, product marketing, sales, market research, software development, project management and education.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Speaker - Tony Byrne, President, Real Story Group

Tony Byrne is the President of the Real Story Group and oversees all of the technology streams and properties, which include CMS Watch, Enterprise Information Watch, and SharePoint Watch. In 2001, Tony founded CMS Watch as a vendor-independent analyst firm that evaluates content technologies and publishes research comparing different solutions head-to-head. Over time, CMS Watch evolved into a multi-channel research and advisory organization, spinning off similar product evaluation research in various areas of Enterprise Content Management. As a result of this natural evolution, in 2010, The Real Story Group became the parent company of CMS Watch and its sister entities, EI Watch and SharePoint Watch. Tony is the original author of The Real Story Group's Web Content Management research, a former journalist, and a 20-year technology industry veteran. Prior to 2001, he managed an engineering team at a systems integration firm. He now focuses his own research on Enterprise Community and Collaboration software, SharePoint, and Web Content Management. During the last decade, Tony has advised clients such as the US Dept. of the Treasury, the American Association of Retired Persons, MBC Television of Dubai, The Canadian Cancer Society, and The Seattle Children's Hospital.

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.

Speaker - Dave Peters, Manager, Systems Integration, Environmental Systems Research Institute

Mr. Peters is author of the Esri Press book Building a GIS, System Architecture Design Strategies for Managers initially published in August 2008 (second edition published January 2012). He is also content manager and principal instructor for Esri System Architecture Design Strategies educational services, developing materials used by Esri Distributors and Business Partners worldwide, promoting services for design and implementation of customer GIS operations. Mr. Peters develops and maintains the Capacity Planning Tools shared on the Esri Press Building a GIS Online Resource Center. He is also author of the System Design Strategies wiki site (wiki.gis.com), providing an online resource for effective system design training and consulting

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.

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.

Speaker - Dave Asprey, VP of Cloud Security, Trend Micro

Dave Asprey brings more than 15 years experience to his position of Vice President of Cloud Security at Trend Micro. In this role, Mr. Asprey helps to shape the company’s cloud strategy, focusing specifically on expanding a Cloud Security Alliance partner ecosystem; participating in cloud security organizations; and cultivating Trend Micro partnerships with cloud security vendors.

Prior to joining Trend Micro, Mr. Asprey was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Trinity Ventures, focused on early stage investment opportunities with companies in the cloud and virtualization markets. Previously, he served as Vice President of Technology and Business and Corporate Development at Blue Coat Systems. He also served as Vice President of Marketing and Technology Strategy at UK-based virtual appliance company Zeus Technology. Other professional roles have included Director of Product Management for Acceleration and WAN Optimization NetScaler and, when that company was acquired by Citrix, responsibility for strategic planning for Citrix’s virtualization business unit, reporting directly to the CTO.
He was also held senior management positions at Speedera Networks (now Akamai); Exodus Communications (now Savvis); and the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Dave Asprey holds degrees in computer science from the University of California, Santa Barbara and holds a master of business administration degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

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.

Speaker - Nicholas Arvanitis, Security Consulting Services, Dimension Data

Nick is a security consultant for global IT services provider Dimension Data. With more than a decade of IT security experience, he specializes in security assessment and penetration testing. He has deep expertise deploying complex security architectures across a broad range of industries, including financial services and government institutions. He has published a number of articles and speaks regularly at conferences including Defcon, BlackHat, DavCon and CSI, among others.

Since 2005, attackers have gone after users, not systems, to penetrate organizations of any size or sophistication. Credential theft via automated malware, targeted phishing campaigns, and massive database breaches have rendered nearly all security controls impotent in the face of attackers that masquerade as legitimate users. Two-factor authentication demonstrably stops such account takeover and fraud but has been hampered by the cost, complexity, and technical limitations of traditional solutions. In this session, we examine the evolution of two-factor authentication over its 20-year history, and identify the modern innovations that promise to democratize strong authentication as a security measure of first resort.

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 addition to lost customers, compensation costs, and brand damage, organizations are subject to a wide range of regulatory measures that mandate data protection and privacy. Yet despite widespread attention, most organizations today have no control over the most commonly exploited vulnerability in their security infrastructure – web browsers. This session will explain how cyber-criminals are able to carry out browser-based attack that can bypass virtually every traditional internet security mechanism, the methods used by criminals to evade detection once they have penetrated the security perimeter, and what can be taken to defeat these threats.

Speaker - Amit Klein, Chief Technology Officer, Trusteer Inc.

As Trusteer’s CTO, Amit Klein manages the company’s Security team which is one of the world’s leading financial malware research groups. Prior to Trusteer, Mr. Klein was Chief Scientist at Cyota Inc. (acquired by RSA Security) a leading provider of layered authentication solutions. In this role, Mr. Klein researched technologies that prevent online fraud, phishing and pharming and filed several patents in those areas. Prior to this, Mr. Klein worked as Director of Security and Research at Sanctum, Inc. (acquired by Watchfire) where he was responsible for the security architecture of all Sanctum products. Mr. Klein holds a B.Sc. (cum laude) in Mathematics and Physics .
Mr. Klein is a world renowned security researcher, having published over thirty articles, papers and technical notes on the topic of Internet security. He was named CTO of the Year by InfoWorld Magazine and has presented at many prestigious conferences including RSA, FSISAC, OWASP and CertConf.

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.

Speaker - John Pironti, President, IP Architects, LLC

John P. Pironti is the President of IP Architects, LLC. He has designed and implemented enterprise wide electronic business solutions, information security and risk management strategy and programs, enterprise resiliency capabilities, and threat and vulnerability management solutions for key customers in a range of industries, including financial services, insurance, energy, government, hospitality, aerospace, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, media and entertainment, and information technology on a global scale. Mr. Pironti has a number of industry certifications including Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified in Risk and Information System Control (CRISC), Information Systems Security Architecture Professional and (ISSAP) and Information Systems Security Management Professional (ISSMP). Mr. Pironti frequently provides briefings and acts as a trusted advisor to senior leaders of numerous organizations on information security and risk management and compliance topics and is also a member of a number of technical advisory boards for technology and services firms. He is also a published author and writer, highly quoted and often interviewed by global media, and an award winning frequent speaker on electronic business and information security and risk management topics at domestic and international industry conferences.

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.

Speaker - Dwayne Melancon, Vice President, Tripwire Inc.

Dwayne Melançon is Tripwire's Chief Technology Officer, where he owns a critical role in driving and evangelizing the company's global overall product strategy. He brings over 25 years of security software experience, and is responsible for leading the company's long term product strategy to meet the evolving data security needs of global enterprises.

Melançon joined Tripwire in 2000 and most recently served as Vice President of Products for Tripwire. He has spearheaded numerous initiatives during his tenure, including executive responsibility for business development, professional services and support, information systems and marketing. Prior to joining Tripwire, Melançon held leadership roles at DirectWeb, Inc., Symantec Corporation and Fifth Generation Systems, Inc. He is certified on both IT management and audit processes, holding both ITIL and CISA certifications, and is a frequent speaker at national and regional industry events.

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.

Mobile devices and the security risks introduced by the software that runs them are proliferating, especially with the open and fragmented Android ecosystem. This talk scrutinizes challenges faced in securing mobile apps, focusing particular attention on the unique challenges of the Android platform, and contrasts them with legacy and more mature software security initiatives. We discuss how consumerization confounds security efforts, how the mobile app lifecycle makes risk a hot potato, and finish with the top Android threats and how to avoid them.

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.

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.

Speaker - Lisa Lorenzin, Principal Solution Architect, Security and Mobility, Juniper Networks

Lisa Lorenzin is a Principal Solutions Architect with Juniper Networks, specializing in security solutions, and a contributing member of Trusted Network Connect (TNC), a work group of the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) that defines an open architecture and standards for endpoint integrity, network access control, and security automation. She has worked in a variety of Internet-related roles since 1994, with more than a decade of focus on network and information security. Her experience in data center, government and enterprise environments, as well as her active participation and service in user groups and standards bodies, has brought her a thorough understanding of the challenges network administrators and users face in today's world of expanding regulations and increasing security threats.

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.

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.

Speaker - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton Metzler & Associates

Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm.

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.

Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton Metzler & Associates

Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm.

Speaker - Shehzad Merchant, VP, Technology, Extreme Networks

Shehzad Merchant serves as Senior Director for Strategy at Extreme Networks, a global leader in Ethernet networking, where he drives strategy and technology direction for advanced data center networking. With over 17 years of industry experience, and an engineering track record that is highlighted by the achievement of several technology patents, Shehzad is a veteran of wired and wireless Ethernet and communications. Shehzad previously served in the CTO office at Nevis Networks, a company specializing in network security. Prior to Nevis, Shehzad was co-founder and vice president of Engineering at Polytime Systems.

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.

Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton Metzler & Associates

Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm.

Panelist - Kevin Murphy, VP of Product Management, Certeon

Kevin Murphy has more than 15 years leading successful products into emerging markets defining and delivering distributed systems for telecommunications, CDNs, IT infrastructure, virtualization, and cloud solutions. Prior to Certeon, Mr. Murphy was the CTO of NEI where he was responsible for their software, cloud, and virtualization strategy as well as expanding the IP portfolio. Mr. Murphy also led the architecture, design, and implementation of GE Intelligent Platform's cloud and virtualization solution for the Proficy product line. Most recently Mr. Murphy was at VCE where he was responsible for defining the security and management of the Vblock Platforms. He holds 2 patents and a BSEE from UMass Lowell.

Panelist - Mark Day, Chief Scientist, Riverbed

Mark Day, PhD. came to Riverbed from Cisco Systems, where he served as technical lead for content networking product management. A senior member of the Office of the CTO, Dr. Day is part of the team responsible for Riverbed’s technology direction and strategy. He works closely with Riverbed customers, solving some of the most technically complex and challenging issues associated with application acceleration and Wide Area Network optimization. Dr. Day also invented the SSL optimization technique that is a core feature of Riverbed’s flagship Steelhead products. This development has that made it practical for enterprises to accelerate secure SSL traffic. He holds 19 patents in distributed systems, presence, streaming media, content networking, mobile communications, and telephony, and has chaired several Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working groups. Dr. Day has held an adjunct appointment at Harvard University teaching graduate computer science, and received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1995.

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.

Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton Metzler & Associates

Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm.

Panelist - Mark Urban, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Blue Coat Systems, Inc.

Panelist - Haseeb Budhani, VP Product Management, Infineta

Haseeb Budhani is responsible for overseeing all aspects of Infineta Systems' product marketing and management, customer and partner relationships, and overall product roadmap. Most recently, he served as Vice President for NET's Broadband Technology Group, spearheading the group's product marketing, program management and business development functions. Haseeb has previously held senior product management, marketing and engineering roles at Personal IT, Citrix Systems, Orbital Data, IP Infusion and Oblix. He has served in key advisory roles for startups such as Chegg Inc. and Gift Venture. Haseeb holds an M.B.A. from UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California.

Panelist - Steve Shah, Sr. Director of Product Management, NetScaler and Cloud Product Group, Citrix

Steve Shah is part of the marketing team in the NetScaler and Cloud Product group where he drives product direction and go-to-market strategy. Before returning to Citrix, Steve Shah was the principal of RisingEdge Consutling, a boutique consulting firm that specialized in strategic marketing for datacenter infrastructure products and cloud computing. Some of Steve's customers include Citrix Systems, Coradiant, Silver Peak, and Amadeus Capital. Prior to his return to consulting, Steve Shah was the VP of Product Strategy and Co-founder of Asyncast which built a NLP engine for use in new media and telephony applications. Steve uses his experience of being the customer, engineer, and marketeer to identify new market opportunities and drive technology in new directions as a result. He gained his expertise by holding various product management, engineering, and system administrator roles at Citrix Systems, NetScaler, Array Networks, and Alteon Web Systems.

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.

Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton Metzler & Associates

Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm.

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.

Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton Metzler & Associates

Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm.

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?

Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton Metzler & Associates

Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm.

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.

Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton Metzler & Associates

Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm.

Panelist - Shehzad Merchant, VP, Technology, Extreme Networks

Shehzad Merchant serves as Senior Director for Strategy at Extreme Networks, a global leader in Ethernet networking, where he drives strategy and technology direction for advanced data center networking. With over 17 years of industry experience, and an engineering track record that is highlighted by the achievement of several technology patents, Shehzad is a veteran of wired and wireless Ethernet and communications. Shehzad previously served in the CTO office at Nevis Networks, a company specializing in network security. Prior to Nevis, Shehzad was co-founder and vice president of Engineering at Polytime Systems.

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.

Speaker - Steven Shalita, Vice President of Marketing, NetScout Systems, Inc.

Steven Shalita has more than 20 years of industry and technology experience across service provider and enterprise markets with a strong background in enterprise networking, MPLS, and IP transformation projects. His wide range of experience includes service management and assurance to service delivery architecture including data center, LAN/WAN, core, edge and metro technologies as well as leading initiatives targeting convergence, mobility, triple-play and business services carrier environments. Mr. Shalita has held senior marketing leadership positions at Alcatel-Lucent, Redback Networks, HP and Cisco. He returned to NetScout in July of 2008, and was previously Director, Product Marketing from 1997 through 1999.

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.

Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton Metzler & Associates

Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm.

Panelist - Mark Urban, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Blue Coat Systems, Inc.

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.

Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton Metzler & Associates

Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm.

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.

Speaker - Stuart Miniman, Senior Analyst, wikibon

Stuart is an analyst and research for Wikibon. He focuses on networking, virtualization (was named a 2011 VMware vExpert), storage and cloud computing. Before becoming an analyst in 2010, Stuart's past positions included telecommunications sales at Lucent Technologies and, a decade at EMC spanning product management, engineering program management and strategic planning in the Office of the CTO. Stuart holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University and an MBA from Bryant University. Stuart is engaged in the technical and social media communities; find him on the Wikibon blog and on Twitter @stu.

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.

Speaker - Barb Goldworm, President and Chief Analyst, FOCUS

Barb Goldworm has spent 30 years in systems and storage in various senior management, marketing, sales, technical and industry analyst positions with IBM, StorageTek, Novell, Enterprise Management Associates and several successful startup ventures. A frequent speaker at industry events, she also created and chaired Interop’s Network Storage Track. More recently, she was one of the top 3 ranked analyst/ knowledge expert speakers at SNW and has been a regular expert speaker for TechTarget Webcasts and Ziff-Davis Summits and E-seminars. She also chaired the 2007 Server Blade Summit on Blades and Virtualization. Barb has published extensively since the 1990s, writing regular columns for Network World and ComputerWorld, as well as numerous business and technical white papers and articles on systems, software, storage, storage networking and enterprise management. She currently writes a regular column for TechTarget SearchServerVirtualization. In 2007, she published a book entitled "Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs" commissioned by Wiley, available on Amazon.com. Barb brings a unique blend of marketing and technical depth, both strategic and tactical, with experience in product management, product marketing, sales, market research, software development, project management and education.

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.

Speaker - Randy Kerns, Senior Strategist, Evaluator Group

As Senior Strategist at Evaluator Group, Randy Kerns brings over 35 years in the computer industry helping storage companies design and develop storage system products and advising technical professionals on storage strategies. Randy spent many years in executive level product strategy and design positions at ProStor Systems, Sun, IBM, StorageTek, Fujitsu and Tandem Computers. He is the author of two books on storage and has regularly taught classes on storage technology in the United States and Europe. He has degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Missouri and the University of Colorado.

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.

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.

Speaker - Erwin Vollering, Service Director, GlassHouse Technologies

Erwin Vollering is an accomplished technical architect and managing consultant with a broad international background. He has extensive experience translating business requirements into cost effective IT infrastructure solutions. As a Services Director at GlassHouse, Erwin oversees our opportunity assessment process as well as scopes and develops virtualization solutions for our clients

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.

Moderator - Barb Goldworm, President and Chief Analyst, FOCUS

Barb Goldworm has spent 30 years in systems and storage in various senior management, marketing, sales, technical and industry analyst positions with IBM, StorageTek, Novell, Enterprise Management Associates and several successful startup ventures. A frequent speaker at industry events, she also created and chaired Interop’s Network Storage Track. More recently, she was one of the top 3 ranked analyst/ knowledge expert speakers at SNW and has been a regular expert speaker for TechTarget Webcasts and Ziff-Davis Summits and E-seminars. She also chaired the 2007 Server Blade Summit on Blades and Virtualization. Barb has published extensively since the 1990s, writing regular columns for Network World and ComputerWorld, as well as numerous business and technical white papers and articles on systems, software, storage, storage networking and enterprise management. She currently writes a regular column for TechTarget SearchServerVirtualization. In 2007, she published a book entitled "Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs" commissioned by Wiley, available on Amazon.com. Barb brings a unique blend of marketing and technical depth, both strategic and tactical, with experience in product management, product marketing, sales, market research, software development, project management and education.

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.

Speaker - Tyler Rohrer, Founder, Liquidware Labs

Tyler Rohrer, founder of Liquidware Labs, was a partner at FOEDUS, a very successful consulting organization that was acquired by VMware in 2008. Tyler's professional services experience and knowledge within VDI deployments is legendary. As an evangelist on the topic, he is a regular contributor to industry forums, and speaks nationally on topics such as application and desktop virtualization, and Cloud Computing. As an Economist, Technologist, Futurist, and Theoretical Physicist - his perspectives and counsel on advanced desktop architectures are sought after by the largest corporations in the world.

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.

Speaker - Barb Goldworm, President and Chief Analyst, FOCUS

Barb Goldworm has spent 30 years in systems and storage in various senior management, marketing, sales, technical and industry analyst positions with IBM, StorageTek, Novell, Enterprise Management Associates and several successful startup ventures. A frequent speaker at industry events, she also created and chaired Interop’s Network Storage Track. More recently, she was one of the top 3 ranked analyst/ knowledge expert speakers at SNW and has been a regular expert speaker for TechTarget Webcasts and Ziff-Davis Summits and E-seminars. She also chaired the 2007 Server Blade Summit on Blades and Virtualization. Barb has published extensively since the 1990s, writing regular columns for Network World and ComputerWorld, as well as numerous business and technical white papers and articles on systems, software, storage, storage networking and enterprise management. She currently writes a regular column for TechTarget SearchServerVirtualization. In 2007, she published a book entitled "Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs" commissioned by Wiley, available on Amazon.com. Barb brings a unique blend of marketing and technical depth, both strategic and tactical, with experience in product management, product marketing, sales, market research, software development, project management and education.

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.

Moderator - Barb Goldworm, President and Chief Analyst, FOCUS

Barb Goldworm has spent 30 years in systems and storage in various senior management, marketing, sales, technical and industry analyst positions with IBM, StorageTek, Novell, Enterprise Management Associates and several successful startup ventures. A frequent speaker at industry events, she also created and chaired Interop’s Network Storage Track. More recently, she was one of the top 3 ranked analyst/ knowledge expert speakers at SNW and has been a regular expert speaker for TechTarget Webcasts and Ziff-Davis Summits and E-seminars. She also chaired the 2007 Server Blade Summit on Blades and Virtualization. Barb has published extensively since the 1990s, writing regular columns for Network World and ComputerWorld, as well as numerous business and technical white papers and articles on systems, software, storage, storage networking and enterprise management. She currently writes a regular column for TechTarget SearchServerVirtualization. In 2007, she published a book entitled "Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs" commissioned by Wiley, available on Amazon.com. Barb brings a unique blend of marketing and technical depth, both strategic and tactical, with experience in product management, product marketing, sales, market research, software development, project management and education.

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.

Speaker - Edward Haletky, CEO/President, The Virtualization Practice, LLC

Edward L. Haletky is the author of VMware vSphere(TM) and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing the Virtual Environment as well as VMware ESX and ESXi in the Enterprise: Planning Deployment of Virtualization Servers, 2nd Edition. Edward owns AstroArch Consulting, Inc., providing virtualization, security, network consulting and development and The Virtualization Practice where he is also an Analyst. Edward is the Moderator and Host of the Virtualization Security Podcast as well as a guru and moderator for the VMware Communities Forums, providing answers to security and configuration questions. Edward is working on new books on 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.

Moderator - Craig Mathias, Principal, Farpoint Group

Craig J. Mathias is a Principal with Farpoint Group, a wireless and mobile advisory firm based in Ashland, MA. Founded in 1991, the company works with manufacturers, network operators, enterprises, and the financial community in technology assessment and analysis, strategy development, product specification and design, product marketing, program management, education and training, and the integration of emerging technologies into new and existing business operations, across a broad range of markets and applications. Craig is an internationally-recognized expert on wireless communications and mobile computing technologies, and has published numerous technical and overview articles on a wide variety of topics. He is a well-known and often-quoted industry analyst and frequent speaker at industry conferences and events, as well as Webcasts, Webinars, and podcasts. He is currently a member of the Advisory Board for the INTEROP conferences (Las Vegas and New York) and is the Chair of the Wireless and Mobility track. He serves as a monthly columnist for InformationWeek.com and the Enterprise Mobility Foundation (theemf.org), and ardent blogger (“Nearpoints”) for networkworld.com. Craig holds an Sc.B. degree in Applied Mathematics/Computer Science from Brown University.

Panelist - Todd Day, Industry Analyst, Mobile & Wireless Communications Group, Frost & Sullivan

As an Industry Analyst in Frost & Sullivan’s Mobile & Wireless Communications Group, Mr. Day researches and analyzes mobile devices, applications, and next generation wireless technologies that enable the mobile revolution. Mr. Day has over 18 years experience in the telecommunications space, ranging from Operations and Engineering, to Marketing and growth strategy consulting for global fortune 100 companies. He has authored numerous syndicated studies and articles in the areas of Next Generation Technologies, Smartphones, and Application Storefronts. Mr. Day has been a speaker at Interop & Go Mobile on topics such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), Mobile OS & Platforms and Mobile Media Services, and is frequently quoted by major media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CNN, and SmartMoney.

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.

Moderator - Michael Dortch, Founder, Principal Analyst, & Managing Editor, dortchonit.com

Michael Dortch is Principal Analyst and Managing Editor at DortchOnIT.com, "an independent voice for technology-dependent people" and consultant to users and providers of disruptive business technologies. Michael has been empowering information technology (IT) buyers, sellers and users since 1979, by translating what technologists say and do into language that non-technologists can understand and use. He helps people and companies to maximize revenues, ROI, business value and positive perceptions through more credible and engaging outreach and improved customer, influencer and partner relations.

One of the "Top 500 Analysts Using Twitter” according to independent metrics, Michael opines frequently and is quoted widely on subjects ranging from cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) to technology solutions for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). He has also been a senior analyst at Aberdeen Group, Constellation Research, Robert Frances Group (RFG), and Yankee Group. In 1990, Michael wrote "The ABCs of Local-Area Networks," a book published internationally in three languages by Sybex, Inc. More information is available at www.DortchOnIT.com.

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.

Moderator - Philippe Winthrop, Managing Director, The Enterprise Mobility Foundation

Philippe Winthrop is the Founder and Managing Director of The Enterprise Mobility Foundation, the organization behind The Enterprise Mobility Forum, the fastest growing content portal and social network exclusively dedicated to enterprise mobility. Philippe has spent his entire career researching emerging technologies and their impact on the corporate value chain. Philippe started his career at GeoPartners research, a boutique strategy consultancy, where he worked on projects including AT&T Wireless’ adoption and migration path to GSM from TDMA as well as the impact of the 1996 Telecom Deregulation Act on Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs). After GeoPartners, Philippe joined IDC's European IT Services Research group where he spearheaded a wide variety of research and consulting projects for the Top 50 IT Services companies in Western Europe. After IDC, Philippe created Axle Ventures, a boutique business planning consultancy focused on SMEs. There, Philippe worked with a wide variety of organizations in eCommerce, Healthcare and IT to help them develop winning go to market strategies. Philippe also launched the Wireless and Mobility research practice at market research firm Aberdeen Group. There, he conducted ground-breaking research to quantify the tangible value of key mobile and wireless technologies, including enterprise mobility strategy adoption, Fixed Mobile Convergence, enterprise WiFi adoption, application deployment on WLANs and more. Philippe recently ended his analyst career after a successful tenure at Strategy Analytics where he spearheaded thought leadership on enterprise mobility management and the growing issues around individual and corporate liable devices.

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.

Moderator - Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst, ZK Research

Kerravala provides a mix of tactical advice to help his clients in the current business climate and long term strategic advice. Kerravala provides research and advice to the following constituents: End user IT and network managers, vendors of IT hardware, software and services and the financial community looking to invest in the companies that he covers.

Kerravala does research through a mix of end user and channel interviews, surveys of IT buyers, investor interviews as well as briefings from the IT vendor community. This gives Kerravala a 360 degree view of the technologies he covers from buyers of technology, investors, resellers and manufacturers.

Kerravala uses the traditional on line and email distribution channel for the research but heavily augments opinion and insight through social media including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Blogs. Kerravala is also heavily quoted in business press and the technology press and is a regular speaker at events such as Interop and Enterprise Connect.

Prior to ZK Research, Zeus Kerravala spent 10 years as an analyst at Yankee Group. He joined Yankee Group in March of 2001 as a Director and left Yankee Group as a Senior Vice President and Distinguished Research Fellow, the firm's most senior research analyst. Before Yankee Group, Kerravala had a number of technical roles including a senior technical position at Greenwich Technology Partners (GTP). Prior to GTP, Kerravala had numerous internal IT positions including VP of IT and Deputy CIO of Ferris, Baker Watts and Senior Project Manager at Alex. Brown and Sons, Inc.

Kerravala holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.

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?

Moderator - Rohit Mehra, Director, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, International Data Corporation

Rohit Mehra is IDC's Director of Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, and the lead analyst for enterprise switching, routing, wireless, voice and network management. He provides expert insight and analysis into industry and technology trends as they relate to enterprise networking and related areas of data, voice, wireless and security. In this capacity, he is responsible for market share and forecast reports as well as global go-to-market strategies. Mr. Mehra also assists clients with custom consulting and research, including user surveys and buyer case studies. He has a deep understanding of networking solutions in key verticals/industry segments, and collaborates closely with IDC Insights and other research groups to assist clients with their specific requirements.

Before joining IDC in 2010, Mr. Mehra spent more than 15 years at several enterprise and telecom infrastructure providers. Most recently, he was Director of Product Marketing at Verisign, before which he was Director of Product Management at 3Com Corporation, responsible for their enterprise wireless portfolio. Prior to 3Com, Mr. Mehra was Director of Product Marketing at a wireless start-up, Bluesocket, and also spent several years at Nortel where he held positions in product marketing, product management and market development. He has extensive product lifecycle and global market development experience, and is a well known industry expert, often speaking/participating at networking, wireless and security events and conferences throughout the world.

Mr. Mehra has a Master’s in engineering management from BITS, Pilani, India, and an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona, USA.

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.

Moderator - Greg Ennis, Technical Director, Wi-Fi Alliance

Greg has been active in the Wireless LAN industry since 1992. He was one of the original developers of the MAC protocol proposal that IEEE 802.11 adopted in 1993 as the foundation for the standard, and subsequently served as Technical Editor for the initial 802.11 specification. He has served as Technical Director of the Wi-Fi Alliance since the founding of the organization in 1999. Previously he served as chair of the IEEE 802.3 Broadband CSMA/CD Task Group, and has held development and engineering management positions at various companies in the communications industry. He has a Masters in Computer Engineering from Stanford University, and a Masters in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin.

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?

Moderator - Dan Rowinski, Writer/Reporter, ReadWriteWeb

Dan Rowinski is the lead mobile reporter for ReadWriteWeb, one of the top technology news sites on the Web. In addition to ReadWriteWeb, Dan's reporting and analysis on the mobile industry has appeared in the Boston Globe, New York Times, Government Computer New and Federal Computer Week among other publications. He holds degrees from both Virginia Commonwealth University and Boston University.

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.

There is little doubt that LTE now constitutes the basis of essentially all carrier 3G/4G deployments going forward, and it’s therefore vital that enterprise network planners and operations staff understand the capabilities, properties, and operational ramifications of this vital technology. This session will look at both current LTE technology and standards, as well as the state of contemporary deployments, and explore the next step in LTE’s evolution, LTE Advanced.

Speaker - Peter Rysavy, President, Rysavy Research

Peter Rysavy is the president of Rysavy Research LLC, a consulting firm that has specialized in wireless technology since 1993. Projects have included reports on the evolution of wireless technology, spectrum analysis for broadband services, evaluation of wireless technology capabilities, strategic consultations, system design, articles, courses and webcasts, network performance measurement, and test reports. Clients include more than seventy-five organizations.

Peter Rysavy is a leading international authority on the capabilities and evolution of wireless technology. He has written more than a hundred and twenty articles, reports, and white papers, and has taught forty public wireless courses and webcasts. He has also performed technical evaluations of many wireless technologies including municipal/mesh Wi-Fi networks, Wi-Fi hotspot networks, mobile browser technologies, cellular-data services, and wireless e-mail systems.

From 1988 to 1993, Peter Rysavy was vice-president of engineering and technology at LapLink where projects included LapLink, LapLink Wireless, and connectivity solutions for a wide variety of mobile platforms. Prior to that, he spent seven years at Fluke Corporation where he worked on touch screen and data acquisition products.

Peter Rysavy is also the executive director of the Portable Computer and Communications Association (PCCA, http://www.pcca.org), a group that evaluates wireless technologies, investigates mobile communications architectures, and promotes wireless-data interoperability. Peter Rysavy graduated with BSEE and MSEE degrees from Stanford University in 1979. More information is available at http://www.rysavy.com

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.

Moderator - Andrew Borg, ASenior Research Analyst, Wireless & Mobility, Aberdeen Group

Andrew Borg is Senior Research Analyst and practice lead in Wireless & Mobility for Aberdeen Group. He is focused on identifying the enablers and friction points in the adoption of wireless and mobility technologies within the enterprise, and in the markets those enterprises serve. His particular interest is in documenting the behavioral and procedural adaptations that the most successful companies within an industry have made; and then in disseminating those best practices for a broader audience to benefit from. Topics from his most recent research agenda range from enterprise mobility management and multi-site wireless LANs, to emerging mobile platforms and wireless network technologies, mobile application delivery, mobile collaboration and video, and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications.

Andrew has more than 20 years of experience in the high technology industry. He served as Vice President of Marketing at Vaultus Mobile Technologies, Inc., and Managing Director, Next Generation Services, then Vice President, Knowledge Resources for RoweCom. Prior to RoweCom, he was Vice President Worldwide, Marketing & Sales, for Trident International, and Director of Corporate Communications Worldwide for Electronics for Imaging, Inc. He holds a Masters Degree from the New York Institute of Technology and a Bachelors from Harvard University.

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.

Moderator - Chris Hazelton, Research Director, The 451 Group

Chris runs the Mobile and Wireless research practice, which covers hardware, software, and services for both enterprise and consumer mobility markets. Chris’ research focuses on mobile device management as well as application development platforms that target smartphones and tablets in the enterprise. He is primarily interested in the shift in enterprise computing from desktop to mobile. Prior to joining 451, Chris covered worldwide smartphone trends for IDC. Chris has been quoted on mobile technology issues by publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CBS, ComputerWorld, Fox Business, InformationWeek, Investors Business Daily, MacWorld, TheStreet, Reuters and Wired. He sits on the Editorial Advisory Board for Mobile Enterprise Magazine.

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.

Moderator - Paul DeBeasi, Research VP, Wireless and Mobility, Gartner

Paul DeBeasi is a Research Vice President at Gartner and a widely recognized authority on wireless technology and enterprise mobility. Paul was the first analyst to predict that 802.11n would replace Ethernet as the dominant enterprise access technology. At Cascade Communications his work as the Frame Relay Product Line Manager helped grow revenue by more than $160M over two years. Paul began his career as an engineer at Bell Laboratories, designing data networking systems. Paul holds a BS degree in Systems Engineering from Boston University and a Master of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.

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.

Moderator - Michael Brandenburg, Industry Analyst, Information & Communication Technologies, Frost & Sullivan

Michael Brandenburg is an industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan, covering infrastructure and unified communications and collaboration as part of the Information and Communications Technologies group. Prior to Frost & Sullivan, Michael has covered the enterprise networking space in editorial roles at TechTarget and Network Computing, and as an enterprise networking analyst for the competitive analysis firm Current Analysis. Michael’s early technology background comes includes over 15 years of technology experience, serving in developer, system administrator, and IT management roles.

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.

Moderator - Tim Scannell, Editorial Director, TechnologyGuide.com, TechTarget

Tim Scannell is the Editorial Director of TechnologyGuide, a family of product review and evaluation Web sites that provide a range of consumer and business information for influencers and buyers of technology products. The TechnologyGuide sites account for close to 24 million page views and serve more than 8.3 million unique visitors per month, and include a number of highly-active discussion forums that deliver more than 3,600 posts and peer reviews each day.

Scannell has been an editor and writer for more than 30 years, working for some of the top publishing companies in the world, including International Data Group, Ziff Davis, Cahners Publishing (now Reed Business Information) and CMP Media (now United Business Media). He has also written for such publications as U.S. News & World Report, USA Today, The Boston Herald, Crain's Net Marketing, InternetNews.com, Mobile Enterprise and The Boston Globe (where he was a freelance technology columnist and contributed to the paper’s business section).

Scannell was also the founder and principal analyst with Shoreline Research, a Quincy, MA based consulting, research and information services company specializing in mobile and wireless technology and initiatives. During the seven years he ran this business, he worked with a number of companies in Europe and Scotland, and was the co-founder of a consulting and channel marketing and training company based in Glasgow, Scotland.

Scannell was also a member of the core start-up team of Softbank Corp.'s U.S. division, assisting with the launch and contributing to the Japanese editions of PC Week Japan, LAN Times Japan, MacUser Japan, and PC Magazine Japan. Later, he also established a U.S. bureau for Softbank's Japan-based magazines, and authored a book on the U.S. Computer industry, published in Japan by Softbank. He also helped launch a mobile media development company, based in California, and established one of the first wireless mobile media content channels available in the U.S., called mFlix.