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Conference: Virtualization Tracks

Virtualization Concepts and Practices | Virtualization Management | Desktop Virtualization

Track Chair:
Barb Goldworm
President and Chief Analyst
FOCUS

Virtualization adoption has soared because of its real dollar savings and operational benefits. Interop's Virtualization conference tracks will help you get up to speed on both basic and advanced virtualization topics including initial consolidation or disaster recovery projects, advanced management capabilities and extending virtualization out to desktops and applications.

Virtualization Concepts and Practices

Virtualization is driving a fundamental shift in how we think about our data center environments. Are you up to speed on all the latest virtualization terminology, technologies and new vendor offerings and releases? Do you need help separating the vendor hype from the realities of life in the trenches? Are you leveraging virtualization to deliver a flexible and agile foundation for the future, reaping the real benefits of a consolidated, highly available, protected infrastructure? The Virtualization Concepts and Practices Track is the place to get answers to these questions—and many more—enabling companies to embrace virtualization for consolidation, disaster recovery and more, with confidence and efficiency.

Tuesday

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Tuesday, April 27
10:15 AM–11:15 AM	Virtualization Primer: Terms, Trends and Technologies Feeling bewildered by a slew of new acronyms, technologies and concepts describing virtualization? Need a high-level overview of what the different types of virtualization mean to you and your business? Do you want to get your arms around server virtualization, hypervisors, OS virtualization, hardware assists, virtual desktop architectures, application streaming and isolation, and where all the various virtualization vendors fit? This is the session for you. Speaker - Barb Goldworm, President and Chief Analyst, FOCUS Barb Goldworm is president and chief analyst of FOCUS (www.focusonsystems.com), a research, analyst and consulting firm focused on systems, software and storage, with an emphasis on virtualization and improving IT agility, TCO and ROI. A frequent keynote speaker, columnist, and author, Barb has spent thirty years in the computer industry, in various technical, marketing, sales, senior management, and industry analyst positions with IBM, Novell, StorageTek, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), and multiple successful startups. In addition to the current virtualization tracks at Interop, Barb also created and chaired Interop's Network Storage Track. She has been one of the top ranked expert speakers at SNW and Data Center Decisions and has been a regular speaker for TechTarget, Ziff-Davis and hundreds of other virtualization events and webcasts. She is also virtualization chair for Blade Systems Insight, and chaired the 2007 Server Blade Summit. Barb also has been a regular expert columnist since the 1990s for publications including Network World, ComputerWorld, TechTarget SearchServerVirtualization and others. She serves on multiple advisory boards and is a frequent judge for awards such as Best of VMworld, and Product of the Year. She has published hundreds of articles, business and technical white papers and market research reports on virtualization, systems, software, storage networking and systems management. She recently published the book, "Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs" (Wiley & Sons), available on Amazon.com. Barb started her career with virtualization in the 1970s with IBM's VM/370, and spent a decade in technical roles as a software developer, systems architect, systems engineer, and software development manager. After another decade in product management, marketing and sales, up through VP of marketing and sales, Barb has spent the last ten years as an analyst, consultant, author and speaker.
11:30 AM–12:30 PM	How Virtualization Can Enable and Improve Disaster Recovery for Any Sized Business Enterprises have invested money in disaster recovery (DR) for years, while small and mid-sized companies with limited budgets simply hoped and prayed that nothing disastrous would happen. Today, companies of all sizes are leveraging virtualization to create cost-effective DR implementations. This session discusses why and how so many companies are utilizing virtualization to implement successful disaster recovery plans. Speaker - Joel McKelvey, Technical Alliance Manager, NetApp Joel T. McKelvey currently serves as technical alliance manager at NetApp, Inc. where he coordinates technical collaboration and co-development efforts between NetApp and key virtualization partners such as VMware and Cisco. Prior to working at NetApp, Mr. McKelvey worked at Cisco Systems, Inc. where he served as alliance manager for several technology alliances. An experienced technology strategist, Mr. McKelvey is co-author of two books and has published numerous papers on topics related to networking, virtualization, and technology strategy. Mr. McKelvey holds masters degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia University. He is a successful marketing and engineering manager, the founder of two startups, and has earned numerous certifications and accreditations from academic and industry groups including the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP), VMware, and Cisco Systems.
2:45 PM–3:45 PM	Virtualization-Life in the Trenches Articles often describe the value that virtualization technologies can bring to IT but what is it really like to implement virtualization? Does it really offer the benefits that the vendors are touting? What are the "gotchas" to avoid? Does desktop virtualization really work? Hear about the experiences of those who have implemented various virtualization solutions. Find out what strategies worked and which ones didn't. Listen to accounts of life in the trenches, and learn what to consider for your next steps in your own implementations of virtual infrastructure.
4:00 PM–5:00 PM	Virtualization And Automation: How Dynamic Is Your Data Center? The over-provisioning model used by data centers for years is unsustainable – and a new dynamic model is emerging driven by virtualization and automation. While these technologies aren’t necessarily new, IT departments must become competent and refine their skills in the use of virtualization and automation to contain costs as businesses continue to demand IT services. This session will help data center managers learn how to leverage these virtualization and automation technologies to create a business-driven data center that delivers new levels of service quality, efficiency, agility and risk reduction. Speaker - Stephen Elliot, Vice President of Strategy, CA Stephen Elliot is vice president of strategy for CA’s Virtualization and Service Automation business unit. In this role, he focuses on business unit technology, strategy creation, analyst relations, market positioning, partner development, and customer deals. Prior to CA, Stephen was a noted software industry analyst at IDC, Hurwitz Group, Gartner, Instat, and Forrester. He also served Inteq, a venture-backed start-up, as product marketing manager. Stephen earned a B.A. from the University of Southern California. He also completed graduate work at American University and Harvard Business School's Executive Education course on Strategic Financial Analysis for Business Valuation.
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Virtualization Management

Is your company taking full advantage of the advanced benefits of virtualization —automation, dynamic workload balancing, high availability and IT optimization? Are you leveraging the latest virtualization tools and techniques for life cycle management, performance and capacity monitoring/and management, chargeback and policy-based management? Are you properly safeguarding and securing your virtual platforms with the right backup and Disaster Recovery plans and solutions? Are you integrating your traditional management toolset with your new virtual ones? The Virtualization Management track is geared for the advanced virtualization professional to offer information and insights into effectively managing, automating and optimizing the new virtual infrastructure.

Wednesday Thursday

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Wednesday, April 28
10:15 AM–11:15 AM	Virtualization Management Primer: What it Takes to Achieve the Full Potential of Virtualization As virtualization implementation progress, the key to realizing the full potential of virtual infrastructures is though advanced management, optimization and automation. This session is a primer on advanced management capabilities such as dynamic workload balancing, high availability, disaster recovery, capacity and performance management, and automated policy-based workflows. It will discuss the value of implementing advanced management 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 is president and chief analyst of FOCUS (www.focusonsystems.com), a research, analyst and consulting firm focused on systems, software and storage, with an emphasis on virtualization and improving IT agility, TCO and ROI. A frequent keynote speaker, columnist, and author, Barb has spent thirty years in the computer industry, in various technical, marketing, sales, senior management, and industry analyst positions with IBM, Novell, StorageTek, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), and multiple successful startups. In addition to the current virtualization tracks at Interop, Barb also created and chaired Interop's Network Storage Track. She has been one of the top ranked expert speakers at SNW and Data Center Decisions and has been a regular speaker for TechTarget, Ziff-Davis and hundreds of other virtualization events and webcasts. She is also virtualization chair for Blade Systems Insight, and chaired the 2007 Server Blade Summit. Barb also has been a regular expert columnist since the 1990s for publications including Network World, ComputerWorld, TechTarget SearchServerVirtualization and others. She serves on multiple advisory boards and is a frequent judge for awards such as Best of VMworld, and Product of the Year. She has published hundreds of articles, business and technical white papers and market research reports on virtualization, systems, software, storage networking and systems management. She recently published the book, "Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs" (Wiley & Sons), available on Amazon.com. Barb started her career with virtualization in the 1970s with IBM's VM/370, and spent a decade in technical roles as a software developer, systems architect, systems engineer, and software development manager. After another decade in product management, marketing and sales, up through VP of marketing and sales, Barb has spent the last ten years as an analyst, consultant, author and speaker.
11:30 AM–12:30 PM	Backing up Your Virtual Environment – Best Practices According to a recent FOCUS survey, “Managing the Virtual Environment”, backing up the virtual environment is IT’s biggest virtualization pain point. The application data contained within each virtual machine is only part of what needs to be backed up. This session will cover best practices for backup in the virtual environment and will discuss capabilities available to assist and simplify your backup process. Speaker - Scott Herold, Lead Architect – Virtualization Business, Quest Software Scott Herold leads product design and architecture for Quest's Virtualization Management Division. With more than a decade of industry experience in operating system, network, security and storage design, Scott is a pioneer in architecting advanced virtualization solutions. Scott also is the co-author of two best-selling books, "VMWare ESX Server: Advanced Technical Design Guide," and "VMWare Infrastructure 3: Advanced Technical Design Guide." Focused on helping organizations achieve the benefits of virtualization while minimizing the challenges, Scott is a frequent presenter at industry events, and contributes to white papers and articles focused on virtualization best practices.
2:00 PM–3:00 PM	Managing Your Virtual Environment Along with its many benefits, the move to a virtual infrastructure brings new challenges to managing the data center. These challenges include virtual server sprawl (largely due to the ease of provisioning virtual servers), capacity and performance management of the virtualized infrastructure, and troubleshooting problems across the virtual and physical environment. While network and systems management toolsets have been around for decades, are they able to handle a virtual world? Hundreds of new tools have emerged to specifically address virtualization management, while existing tools are evolving with new virtual capabilities. Learn about how both of these types of tools can be implemented to help you with the long-running challenge of successful end-to-end management. Speaker - Stephen Elliot, Vice President of Strategy, CA Stephen Elliot is vice president of strategy for CA’s Virtualization and Service Automation business unit. In this role, he focuses on business unit technology, strategy creation, analyst relations, market positioning, partner development, and customer deals. Prior to CA, Stephen was a noted software industry analyst at IDC, Hurwitz Group, Gartner, Instat, and Forrester. He also served Inteq, a venture-backed start-up, as product marketing manager. Stephen earned a B.A. from the University of Southern California. He also completed graduate work at American University and Harvard Business School's Executive Education course on Strategic Financial Analysis for Business Valuation. Speaker - Rich Boudeau, Vice President of Product Marketing and Management, DynamicOps Rich Bourdeau is currently vice president of product marketing and management at DynamicOps. DynamicOps provides delivery automation and governance of private cloud based IT services. Rich has more than 20 years experience developing, managing, and marketing IT infrastructure management solutions. He was vice president of product management at Incipient, and held product marketing and management positions at in EMC’s storage management division.
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Thursday, April 29
11:30 AM–12:30 PM	Securing the Virtualized Data Center As data centers move become more virtualized, companies are still determining how to secure these environments. This session will examine the inner workings of the virtual data center, including where the security weak spots are and what can be done to ensure protection of critical data being stored there. Speaker - Paul Arceneaux, Vice President of Systems Management, Tipping Point Paul Arceneaux has more than 12 years of network and system management experience. Prior to TippingPoint, he was vice president of systems management for 3Com Corporation. He was responsible for the engineering and product management of the company’s management software. Previously, Arceneaux was vice president and general manager for Siemens network and service management software solutions. In addition, he has worked as a project engineer dealing with security, time management and network management.
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Desktop Virtualization

Have you been hearing the buzz about desktop virtualization and wondering if it's hype or reality and whether it makes sense for your organization? Are you looking at ways to stretch the lifespan of your current desktops, because hardware purchases have been put on hold? Are you tired of the help desk phone ringing off the hook every time there's a desktop or application update or patch rolled out? Have you had laptops lost or stolen and been looking at ways to better secure corporate information located on endpoint systems? The Desktop Virtualization track will give you information on the various desktop and application virtualization technologies, architectures, and solutions and their real business benefits, plus will offer implementation tips to help reduce ongoing costs and improve the overall management, security, and support of your desktop environment.

Tuesday Wednesday Thursday

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Tuesday, April 27
11:30 AM–12:30 PM	The Emergence of Virtualized Application Delivery Appliances The last few years has seen a great growth in the deployment of virtualized servers and storage. We are now seeing the deployment of software based application delivery appliances such as WAN optimization controllers (WOCs) and application delivery controllers (ADCs). These devices hold the promise of fundamentally changing application delivery. The members of this PowerPoint-free session will discuss the pros and cons of these appliances. What kind of performance improvements will you experience with a virtualized appliance? How will these devices be managed? Do they work with all hypervisors? Are they integrated with other branch office or data center functionality? Are they certified with any major software or storage vendors? How are they priced vs. a traditional appliance? 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 - Kenneth Salchow, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, F5 Speaker - Shawn Cooney, Co-Founder, Certeon Speaker - Greg Smith, Senior Director Product Marketing NetScaler Product Group, Citrix Systems Inc Greg Smith is the director of product marketing for Citrix System's Application Networking solutions. Greg joined Citrix through the company's acquisition of NetScaler in 2005, bringing more than 14 years of experience in engineering, product management and product marketing. He is responsible for the product marketing strategy for Citrix's Application Networking products, including Citrix NetScaler, Citrix WANScaler and the Citrix Application Firewall product lines. Speaker - Mark Urban, Director of Product Marketing, Blue Coat Speaker - Paul Nicholson, Director of Product Marketing, A10 Networks
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Wednesday, April 28
3:15 PM–4:15 PM	Desktop Virtualization Primer: One Size Does Not Fit All When discussing virtual desktops, most people think of virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI) based on server virtualization technologies. However, there are a number of methods for delivering, provisioning and managing virtual desktops. This session will examine a range of technologies that can be used to deploy and manage virtual desktops, and how to match these technologies with user requirements. Speaker - Barb Goldworm, President and Chief Analyst, FOCUS Barb Goldworm is president and chief analyst of FOCUS (www.focusonsystems.com), a research, analyst and consulting firm focused on systems, software and storage, with an emphasis on virtualization and improving IT agility, TCO and ROI. A frequent keynote speaker, columnist, and author, Barb has spent thirty years in the computer industry, in various technical, marketing, sales, senior management, and industry analyst positions with IBM, Novell, StorageTek, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), and multiple successful startups. In addition to the current virtualization tracks at Interop, Barb also created and chaired Interop's Network Storage Track. She has been one of the top ranked expert speakers at SNW and Data Center Decisions and has been a regular speaker for TechTarget, Ziff-Davis and hundreds of other virtualization events and webcasts. She is also virtualization chair for Blade Systems Insight, and chaired the 2007 Server Blade Summit. Barb also has been a regular expert columnist since the 1990s for publications including Network World, ComputerWorld, TechTarget SearchServerVirtualization and others. She serves on multiple advisory boards and is a frequent judge for awards such as Best of VMworld, and Product of the Year. She has published hundreds of articles, business and technical white papers and market research reports on virtualization, systems, software, storage networking and systems management. She recently published the book, "Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs" (Wiley & Sons), available on Amazon.com. Barb started her career with virtualization in the 1970s with IBM's VM/370, and spent a decade in technical roles as a software developer, systems architect, systems engineer, and software development manager. After another decade in product management, marketing and sales, up through VP of marketing and sales, Barb has spent the last ten years as an analyst, consultant, author and speaker.
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Thursday, April 29
9:00 AM–10:00 AM	What Virtualization Means to the Branch Office Most IT organizations are taking IT resources such as servers, applications and storage out of branch offices and placing them in centralized data centers. This raises some critical questions: How can IT organizations overcome the impediments to the broad deployment of virtual desktops? Should the next generation branch office be serverless? What type of device(s) needs to still be in the branch office and how is it managed? What techniques can be used to overcome the performance issues? The speakers on this panel will answer those questions and will present alternative designs for your next generation branch office. 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 - Apurva Dave, Vice President of Product Marketing, Riverbed Technology Apurva Davé, Vice President, Product Marketing and Alliances, for Riverbed Technology, is responsible for planning, directing and implementing all facets of Riverbed’s product marketing activities. He works closely with Riverbed customers and the company’s executive team, defining product rollouts and positioning, and is intimately involved with Riverbed’s cloud computing initiatives. Previously, Apurva served as Director of Product Marketing for Fast Forward Networks and Inktomi. He holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, and an AB in Computer Science from Brown University. Speaker - Abhinav Bisarya, Product Marketing Manager, Juniper Networks Speaker - Shashi Kiran, Senior Manager, Cisco As part of Cisco’s Borderless Networks Initiative, Shashi Kiran heads the Enterprise Routing and WAN Optimization Marketing team for the Network Systems and Security group at Cisco. In this position he is responsible for defining the vision and strategic execution for the network as a platform focusing on various technologies that have a play in the branch and WAN. In his 15-year career, Shashi has held various roles in the areas of Product Line Management, Marketing, Business Development, Sales and Network Engineering focusing on areas of Security, Routing, Metro Ethernet and hi-touch services for Enterprise and Service Provider networks. Prior to Cisco he has worked with Nortel, Euclid Networks and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (Dept.of Electronics, India). He also was an honorary consultant and columnist for the Network Magazine, Indian edition from 1997-2001. To propagate Network awareness in the 1990s, he devised India’s first e-mail based course on Internetworking that was subsequently syndicated in leading IT magazines. Kiran has been involved in contributing to standards bodies primarily in security and routing areas and frequently speaks at Industry events. He holds a Bachelors degree in Electronics Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration in addition to a few industry certifications. Speaker - Todd Logan, Windows Server Technology Specialist, Microsoft Todd Logan, MCSE, MCSA, MCDST, CWNA, Security+, is a Windows Server Technology Specialist for Microsoft specializing in virtualization. Todd was a technical trainer for ten years prior to joining Microsoft. He is a published author on topics relating to Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, and wireless technologies. He also created a series of technical certification videos for CBT Nuggets, Inc.
10:15 AM–11:15 AM	Panel: Best Practices for Desktop and Application Virtualization Desktop and application virtualization hold the promise of solving many of the desktop management problems that have been plaguing IT since PCs first began to multiply in corporations in the early 1980s. How can these various technologies help reduce desktop and application management nightmares? Where should they fit into an overall desktop management strategy? What benefits can be gained and what pitfalls can be avoided? What is involved in evaluating, planning and implementing them? Learn about implementing virtual desktops and application virtualization and streaming, and evaluate how you might incorporate these types of solutions into your desktop and application management strategy.
11:30 AM–12:30 PM	Is There a Compelling Business Case for Desktop Virtualization? You have heard good things about VDI, but is there really a business case for moving to a virtual desktop infrastructure? Whether you are just starting to evaluate desktop virtualization or have started implementing virtual desktops, building a business case for your next phase can help you get the investment dollars you need to move forward. This session will give you the information you need to begin to create that business case and help your management understand how desktop virtualization can reduce your total cost of ownership (TCO), including your ongoing OpEx costs.
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