2012 Speaker List

Want to know what’s next in wireless and mobile? Ask the senior managers who are betting their firms’ success on meeting your current and future needs in an environment dominated by both rapid technological change and fierce competition. And that’s exactly what we will do in this session, with time for your questions as well.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

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.

Virtualization has clear benefits for enterprises along with widespread adoption. But what about small to medium businesses? Do those benefits apply? Should SMBs do it themselves or should they look to service providers to take over? How does virtualization relate to the cloud and should SMBs be going straight to the cloud? And if so, should it be hosted private cloud or a public cloud?

Throughout the workshop, we’ll be discussing how building private clouds requires a combination of infrastructure, virtualization, optimization, automation, management, orchestration, self-service portals, and service catalogs. In this closing panel, we'll discuss our panelists’ experiences with various building blocks, the options IT has today to transform their data center operations into IT as a service, and recommended best practices for successfully building private clouds.

This session serves to address a gap in the industry of Cloud Business Patterns. A good mix of technology- or architecture-centric patterns – or Cloud IT or Architecture Patterns – exists from various sources. However, the prevailing literature on business-centric patterns – or Cloud Business Patterns – is scant. Cloud Business Patterns serve to express common business constructs, business behaviors, and business requirements which lend themselves to cloud based delivery and consumption, regardless of underlying technology choices or technology-centric patterns. Examples of technology-centric patterns are Virtual Machine Patterns and Virtual Desktop Patterns. Examples of Cloud Business Patterns are Broker Pattern, and App Store Pattern. The session reports on and extends on some of the work produced or is in evolution from the Working Group on Cloud Business Patterns at the Cloud Standards Customer Council (www.cloud-council.org). CSCC is hosted by the Object Management Group (OMG). CSCC is unique in representing the voice of the end user and customer – in the mix of technology vendors – with the mission to influence cloud standards produced by Standards Development Organizations.

The last few years has seen a significant adoption of server and storage virtualization. The network, however, has remained static. The good news is that we are now seeing the first steps towards virtualizing the network and network services. The bad news is that there are a number of differing ideas as to what is meant by network virtualization. The panelists in this session will describe what they mean by network virtualization and identify the value that it provides to enterprise networks.

Throughout the workshop, we’ll be discussing how building private clouds requires a combination of infrastructure, virtualization, optimization, automation, management, orchestration, self-service portals, and service catalogs. In this closing panel, we'll discuss our panelists’ experiences with various building blocks, the options IT has today to transform their data center operations into IT as a service, and recommended best practices for successfully building private clouds.

Many SAP customers have already started on their journey to the cloud, and there are still others who are considering the use of cloud technology as an option to run their SAP NetWeaver and SAP Business Suite applications. Our innovative approach to deploying SAP virtual appliances into the cloud provides the ability to immediately leverage the potential of preassembled, preconfigured SAP solutions, run instant demos, and pilot new SAP technologies without any delay. In this session you will learn about the key concepts of the on-demand solution "Project Titanium", together with virtual appliances from the virtual appliance factory (VAF) repository as a means of accelerating this journey.

You will also hear Virtustream, one of SAP’s certified cloud service providers, discuss the business and technical factors that should be considered when moving enterprise applications like SAP to the cloud. General guidelines and principles will be supported with real life customer examples who have benefited from Virtustream’s expertise in helping customers move from on-premise installations to cloud-based implementations.

Transitions and Transformations

Cloud computing is now a key part of every enterprise IT agenda in some form. Private, public and/or hybrid. IaaS, SaaS, and/or PaaS. Cloud access from smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, mobile devices and/or kiosks. The road to cloud is full of transitions and transformations, some easy, some hard. Some technical, some organizational. Some short-term, some long-term. In this keynote session, panelists will share their experiences with widely varying organizations, navigating the road to cloud – finding and avoiding the potholes and bumps in the road, smoothing out the transitions, and aiding/accelerating transformation.

Many IT organizations are committed to advancing their virtual infrastructure and moving to private and hybrid clouds, but are unclear how to implement the steps to get there. This session will discuss how various IT organizations are building on their VMware infrastructure and adopting private and hybrid cloud computing, and will show how private and hybrid clouds can address a wide range of technology and business challenges. Discussion topics will include rationales for workloads in the private clouds vs public cloud, technical challenges, critical capabilities of cloud solutions and resulting value delivered to IT organizations and the business.

Among the key reasons businesses choose to pursue managed services are the need to consolidate multi-vendor relationships and solutions management, limited expertise in specific products and technologies, and reduction in their operational expenditure. Lines are blurring between traditional dedicated hosting and cloud computing services as customers increasingly want a consistent service level across both architectures, complete with comprehensive service level agreements (SLAs).This panel will discuss how Operators, System Integrators and Vendors can effectively use Cloud infrastructure to deliver managed services to their respective customers.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

Driven largely by the need to support the flow of information between branch offices and data centers, many IT organizations have implemented WAN optimization controller (WOC) functionality. On a going forward basis, IT organizations looking to implement WOC functionality have a number of fundamental questions that must be addressed. One such question is should they implement WOCs themselves or should they acquire the functionality from a cloud provider. Should the WOCs be hardware based or software based? What is the best way to optimize the performance of public cloud services? In this session, end users will discuss what they see as the future of WAN optimization and give you the insight into what they have done to leverage the emerging functionality.

In order to secure and control access to sensitive data in the cloud, enterprises typically encrypt their data. Dave Asprey will share best practices for encryption key management for data in the cloud. Attendees will hear the issues that they should consider when weighing where to maintain encryption keys and learn details of four key compliance guidelines, including COBIT, PCI, HIPPA and SOX. Finally, Dave will discuss why encryption keys should only be stored physically separate from the storage or infrastructure provider and under the direct control of the data owner.

There are many choices facing network managers when choosing tools and techniques for planning and operating today's networks. Some of the options include Best of Breed or Integrated Suite? NetFlow or Packet Monitoring? Local or SaaS? Proactive or Reactive? Internal or MSP? And the stakes could not be higher - networks are returning to prominence as a critical piece of the IT infrastructure, and the expectations for reliability and sustained performance are ratcheting upward. In this debate-style panel, Jim Frey of Enterprise Management Associates will drive a lively discussion amongst management technology leaders who will look at the pros, cons, and major decisions points when selecting management approaches and strategies.

Ari Banerjee and Caroline Chappell, Senior Analysts, Heavy Reading, will offer their perspectives on the cloud market, detailing where telecom service providers are in their efforts to provide cloud-based services, outlining the current state of standards in the cloud market and presenting some of the ongoing challenges service providers face in the cloud realm. They will also share original Heavy Reading research on industry perspectives of the future of Cloud Computing services.

Having a streamlined underlying BSS/OSS systems will be critical for CSPs for launching and profiting from innovative cloud services. Old legacy BSS/OSS systems will fall short of flexibility, scalability and control which cloud based business models demand. Operator's back office systems which encompass order capture, service delivery, rating, billing and service assurance need to be integrated, streamlined and adhere to best practice business processes for delivering on-demand Cloud based services. This will enable operators to reduce their Opex cost, reduce time to market of services, inject efficiency into their product management strategy and help them maximize their revenue potential from Cloud services. In this panel we will discuss how a nimble order to cash to care value chain is a pre-requisite for operators to create operational efficiency and achieve profitability.

Among the key reasons businesses choose to pursue managed services are the need to consolidate multi-vendor relationships and solutions management, limited expertise in specific products and technologies, and reduction in their operational expenditure. Lines are blurring between traditional dedicated hosting and cloud computing services as customers increasingly want a consistent service level across both architectures, complete with comprehensive service level agreements (SLAs).This panel will discuss how Operators, System Integrators and Vendors can effectively use Cloud infrastructure to deliver managed services to their respective customers.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

Security remains one of the biggest concerns for companies evaluating the cloud. In some cases, there is just cause, as cloud data breaches and privacy issues still abound among public and private cloud platforms. However, IT leaders should not reinvent the wheel when it comes to cloud security, and instead rely on proven and existing network security rules, policies and technologies. This panel of networking, cloud and security industry experts will break down the hype around cloud security and discuss how to leverage existing best practices in network security when moving to the cloud. Topics covered will include PCI compliance, access control rules, failover and disaster recovery, data encryption and more. For those IT professionals who want to put the cloud in the context of the network, this session is for you. This is a vendor agnostic session focused on best practices and open dialogue.

There are many choices facing network managers when choosing tools and techniques for planning and operating today's networks. Some of the options include Best of Breed or Integrated Suite? NetFlow or Packet Monitoring? Local or SaaS? Proactive or Reactive? Internal or MSP? And the stakes could not be higher - networks are returning to prominence as a critical piece of the IT infrastructure, and the expectations for reliability and sustained performance are ratcheting upward. In this debate-style panel, Jim Frey of Enterprise Management Associates will drive a lively discussion amongst management technology leaders who will look at the pros, cons, and major decisions points when selecting management approaches and strategies.

This session will explore what IT infrastructure management (ITIM/DCIM) really is, define the scope of infrastructure used to deliver the InteropNet, explain the infrastructure management best practice evolution at InteropNet, and demonstrate a live tour of Cormant CS (CableSolve) – the InteropNet documentation solution.

The Unified Communications market is experiencing a familiar dynamic around multi-vendor interoperability: Vendors say they have it, customers say they don’t. So which is closer to the truth—how much interoperability is really out there? This session will help you understand the degree to which different vendors’ UC elements work together, and how much integration work has to be done to make products work together. Specifically, we’ll look at the issues of federation and interworking—which tend to be one-off arrangements between pairs of vendors—versus true interoperability, in which standards compliance allows for actual plug-and-play deployment of any vendor’s product into an existing system. Leading consultants/analysts will give you a detailed breakdown of which products interoperate, and where (if anywhere) there is true interoperability.

Hadoop makes it very easy for developers to run code across many machines, and large volumes of data. But it also makes it very hard to examine the low-level behavior and performance of a given job. Taken together, these features enable developers to run heavy, inefficient code at scale. In this talk, I'll discuss a months-long campaign to speed up a workload of thousands of distinct Hadoop jobs. I'll talk about particular anti-patterns we found, and their fixes, as well as a method for profiling in the large.

Unlike almost every other area of IT, when it comes to security, no organization is ever really done. And, despite major advances in mobile security standards and products and services, the need for every greater vigilance – and knowledge – will be with us for some time. This session will review the current challenges and important new solutions that enable mobility to increase in value without compromising the security and integrity of the enterprise itself.

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.

Those who promote cloud standards cite the ability to do the same everywhere, and thus provide portability for applications and data, and much more business value. However, we’ve not had a good track record when it comes to standards, and cloud computing seems to be on the same path. So, are cloud standards real? If so, which one should we pay attention to?

In this panel we will debate the value of cloud computing standards. What works? What does not? And what may work in the future? More importantly, advice on how you can create a cloud standards strategy for your enterprise.

Not too long ago, it seemed that Service-Oriented Architecture was yesterday's news. Vendors turned it into an excuse to sell more middleware. The Web Services standards overpromised and under delivered. And architects finally realized SOA success depended less on integration (difficult) and more on governance (even more difficult).

But today, SOA is seeing a surprising resurgence. The reason? Cloud Computing. Achieving ongoing business value with the Cloud requires architecture -- in particular, SOA.

But the SOA we need in the Cloud isn't the middleware-heavy, big iron SOA of the last decade. We need a lightweight, Web-centric approach. This session will connect the dots between SOA and Cloud, how REST fits into the picture, and will explain why SOA is so important to Cloud Computing.

Come learn how F5 Application Delivery Controllers provide Intelligent Network & Application Security, Remote Access, and Global High Availability, within the Interop Network.

The level of innovation in wireless and mobile has never been greater – especially considering the long histories of these co-dependent fields. But new developments appear at an amazing pace, and this session will look at some of the most interesting and important. From improved wireless performance to new applications and lower costs, a knowledge of key advances in wireless and mobile technologies can yield huge benefits.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of the cloud is that it takes away the IT burden from small and mid-sized businesses. AppRiver's VP Tom Buoniello will discuss why customer service and choice are the keys to success in the SMB space.

With mobility management one of the most important challenges facing the enterprise today, the options are wide ranging, and, dare we say it, confusing. Mobile Device Management (MDM)? Mobile Applications Management (MAM)? Mobile Expense Management (MEM)? Mobile Data Management (the other MDM) – and more? This session will make sense of all of the EMM landscape, helping you craft an effective solution with minimal overlap and maximum benefit.

With the explosion of mobile devices and applications in the enterprise and the challenges brought on by bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives, mobility is becoming a key responsibility within IT. The desire to honor employee preferences regarding mobile devices must be balanced with IT’s responsibilities to manage and secure corporate data and systems.

While the initial feeling was that adequate management could be extended through push email tools like Microsoft’s Exchange Active Sync or Lotus Notes Traveler, organizations quickly learned that they needed more comprehensive tools like those being offered by the mobile device management (MDM) vendors. Now with the rapid uptake on those solutions users are discovering the vast range of mobile threat vectors including applications, operating systems, over-the-air snooping, wireless denial of service, and careless user behavior. Those threats are multiplied if those devices are used on cellular networks, in-house Wi-Fi networks, and public Hot Spots.

This program will provide the groundwork for developing, implementing, and maintaining a best practices mobility plan and policy. The major elements involved in ensuring mobile security and management including MDM systems, internal app stores, and self-service portals will be discussed, along with an overall program for how these systems must be developed in line with the specific business goals of the organization.

Who Should Attend

Enterprise mobility managers or anyone involved in the development or maintenance of enterprise mobility policies for BYOD implementations.

Key Takeaways

• A comprehensive understanding of the tools and techniques used to manage a mobile environment including MDM systems, app stores, guest portals, and the rest.
• Key areas to watch in the selection of a mobile device management solution.
• An update on the latest developments in mobile security involving networks, devices, data and applications
• A checklist of the major issues to be addressed in a mobility policy and the range of options we typically see considered
• A template to help your organization develop and maintain an effective mobility plan and policy for both corporate liable and individually owned mobile devices.

As with the emergence of any new technology, Cloud has brought more than its fair share of issues. First there is the human impact of cultural shifts, talent management, and organizational change. Secondly, the technology implications of security, operational process changes, and governance hurdles. Finally, there is the business side of economics, continuity, and alignment. Making all of this work is can be a daunting task, but there are many who have successfully navigated these waters and can share insights on key issues they’ve encountered and how they resolved them.

Information risk management and security is an ever changing and evolving concept and challenge. The threats that are posed to organizations and the risks they create are constantly changing and becoming more challenging. The solutions used to protect organizations against these threats and mitigate the risks they create are also changing and evolving. This panel discussion will look at the emerging trends in information risk management security from both a business and technological perspective.

OpenStack provides a fully open-source implementation of a cloud fabric controller, including identity, object storage, and compute capabilities. With large-scale deployments at Rackspace, HP, Dell, and AT&T, the OpenStack platform provides a scalable, high-performance alternative to proprietary cloud solutions. More importantly, the OpenStack components are fully programmable, with a RESTful API that supports automating every operation available.

This is a hands-on workshop that walks users through the steps of using PHP to develop cloud applications in real time. Using the OpenStack demonstration site TryStack, participants can follow along and create their own applications to store and retrieve objects as well as create, resize, and manage servers (compute instances). Note that hands-on participation is not required, but can be an added bonus for the more technical members of the audience.

In addition to the step-by-step instruction, the workshop includes an overview of the major OpenStack components, the OpenStack API and its extension mechanism, and a discussion into how different providers may customize their available features.

Ari Banerjee and Caroline Chappell, Senior Analysts, Heavy Reading, will offer their perspectives on the cloud market, detailing where telecom service providers are in their efforts to provide cloud-based services, outlining the current state of standards in the cloud market and presenting some of the ongoing challenges service providers face in the cloud realm. They will also share original Heavy Reading research on industry perspectives of the future of Cloud Computing services.

Telecom service providers come to the cloud market having already adopted IT management best practices and security standards to become trusted providers of traditional IT outsourcing services, such as colo and hosting. But it is unclear, in these early days of cloud deployment, whether enterprises will pay more for a standards-heavy, high-performance trusted cloud solution or whether they expect a new generation of cloud standards, aimed at delivering security and resiliency in the multi-tenant, dynamic, and non-geographic cloud realm, but at lower cost. This panel will examine the current state of standards in the cloud market, including the role of industry standards groups, and look at who is driving the standards process.

What does 'carrier cloud' look like? How are telecom cloud providers marrying their network services and data center-based cloud compute, storage, platform and software services? What comprehensive cloud management and application migration strategies are needed to create and operate a carrier cloud and do existing tools and technologies come up to scratch? How can operators abstract and virtualize their networks so that they are as elastic as IT cloud automation platforms and what benefits will this deliver to them? What role will PaaS and SaaS play in the carrier cloud? This panel will address these questions and more in exploring the evolution of the carrier cloud.

4 out of 5 SAP customers say cloud computing is important to their company’s business strategy. Some companies look to the cloud to reduce IT costs. Others wield cloud computing to improve company agility and execution speed. The most advanced companies have a hybrid approach to cloud computing that fosters collaboration between business and IT to create competitive advantages. Join us in this webinar to learn how a hybrid approach to cloud computing can help advance your company from merely saving money to innovating competitive advantages in the cloud.

Wi-Fi is the only wireless technology to effectively serve broadband data, voice, and video across the three key operational domains of the residence, the enterprise, and in public spaces. Growth continues at a remarkable pace, accompanied by new standards, specifications, performance, and applications. This panel will review key current and upcoming developments in this vital technology.

With mobility management one of the most important challenges facing the enterprise today, the options are wide ranging, and, dare we say it, confusing. Mobile Device Management (MDM)? Mobile Applications Management (MAM)? Mobile Expense Management (MEM)? Mobile Data Management (the other MDM) – and more? This session will make sense of all of the EMM landscape, helping you craft an effective solution with minimal overlap and maximum benefit.

Security remains one of the biggest concerns for companies evaluating the cloud. In some cases, there is just cause, as cloud data breaches and privacy issues still abound among public and private cloud platforms. However, IT leaders should not reinvent the wheel when it comes to cloud security, and instead rely on proven and existing network security rules, policies and technologies. This panel of networking, cloud and security industry experts will break down the hype around cloud security and discuss how to leverage existing best practices in network security when moving to the cloud. Topics covered will include PCI compliance, access control rules, failover and disaster recovery, data encryption and more. For those IT professionals who want to put the cloud in the context of the network, this session is for you. This is a vendor agnostic session focused on best practices and open dialogue.

Initiatives like cloud computing, agile processes, and devops still run on servers, storage, and networking. Many cloud, agile, and devops proponents try to commoditize and minimize the value of underlying hardware - in fact someone still needs to build and manage the infrastructure to enable faster, better, and more simple IT. The technologies that will be used in data centers in the next 12 to 18 months will be significantly impacted by what you decide today. New technologies in servers, storage, and networking can have a positive impact regardless of your strategic initiatives. In this panel, we’ll discuss what is on the horizon in data center technologies and how you can leverage them. Bring your questions.

As Enterprises become more distributed, it becomes critical that the branch networks be ready for ubiquitous connectivity catering to new trends like BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). Services like bandwidth optimization, security, and support of the VoIP gateway are getting increasingly important in addition to wired and wireless access. This session will explore in detail the changing landscape and requirements for the new Intelligent Branch.

Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD, is perhaps the greatest sea change in mobility since the rise of wireless networks beginning almost three decades ago. While improved operational economies and user satisfaction are the goals, the challenges inherent in implementing an effective BYOD strategy are many. This session will explore how to construct effective BYOD polices and maintain security as organizational information finds its way to user handsets and other non-enterprise-owned devices.

As with the emergence of any new technology, Cloud has brought more than its fair share of issues. First there is the human impact of cultural shifts, talent management, and organizational change. Secondly, the technology implications of security, operational process changes, and governance hurdles. Finally, there is the business side of economics, continuity, and alignment. Making all of this work is can be a daunting task, but there are many who have successfully navigated these waters and can share insights on key issues they’ve encountered and how they resolved them.

Those who promote cloud standards cite the ability to do the same everywhere, and thus provide portability for applications and data, and much more business value. However, we’ve not had a good track record when it comes to standards, and cloud computing seems to be on the same path. So, are cloud standards real? If so, which one should we pay attention to?

In this panel we will debate the value of cloud computing standards. What works? What does not? And what may work in the future? More importantly, advice on how you can create a cloud standards strategy for your enterprise.

Killer applications for cloud computing have emerged, and we’re gathering value from them right now. However, where should we place our best applications in the future? What will be the next wave of killer cloud computing applications?

In this panel our experts will provide their take on the emerging uses for cloud computing platforms, including what will be hot for years to come. Come to this panel with your own ideas and concepts, and see if you agree with the experts’ take on the future of cloud computing.

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.

Advances in video technology, together with Moore’s Law, are driving video vendors toward positioning their products more as software than hardware. What does this evolution mean for enterprises that are seeing ever-increasing interest in video in multiple contexts—room systems, desktops, and mobile in particular? How is it affecting price/performance, interoperability, ease of deployment and use—and what are the implications for enterprises with large installed bases of legacy video systems that are more hardware-centric? This session will update you on the latest developments in video products, and will help you develop a plan for moving forward on video while protecting legacy investments.

Software-defined networking (SDN) is one of the most written about topics in IT because it holds the promise to fundamentally change how networking is done. There is some question, however, about whether or not there is any substance behind SDNs or are they largely a media event? In this two-part session, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) will describe both SDN and OpenFlow, including a discussion of the current status of the relevant standards and what changes you can expect to see over the next year. Jim Metzler will then present a detailed overview of how end users are approaching the deployment of SDN and he will also summarize the strategy of the leading SDN vendors. The biggest component of this session will be one or more end users describing why they implemented SDN, what they learned from their implementation and what their next steps are.

Break from 11:15 to 12:30

This session kicks off the Big Data Workshop by cutting through the hype and laying a foundation about big data from both an IT and business perspective. The speaker will answer key questions, such as what big data is and what it isn’t, the types of big data, the benefits and concerns, and how to get started. The session will also discuss where big data is today and where it is headed, exploring approaches such as distributed and decentralized models, as well as discussing key technologies in the big data ecosystem.

Security remains one of the biggest concerns for companies evaluating the cloud. In some cases, there is just cause, as cloud data breaches and privacy issues still abound among public and private cloud platforms. However, IT leaders should not reinvent the wheel when it comes to cloud security, and instead rely on proven and existing network security rules, policies and technologies. This panel of networking, cloud and security industry experts will break down the hype around cloud security and discuss how to leverage existing best practices in network security when moving to the cloud. Topics covered will include PCI compliance, access control rules, failover and disaster recovery, data encryption and more. For those IT professionals who want to put the cloud in the context of the network, this session is for you. This is a vendor agnostic session focused on best practices and open dialogue.

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.

Cloud Computing has already radically impacted all aspects of IT. It could be compared to the switch from circuit- to packet-based networking, or from procedural to object-oriented programming, or from mainframes to client-server models. As with those shifts, some IT professionals and skill sets will thrive -- and others will become obsolete. Clouds rely on a new set of fundamentals: horizontal scaling, virtualization, multi-provider application hosting, advanced business and orchestration management, and more. In this session, we will cover the technologies that have and continue to emerge to deliver these solutions and the IT challenges that come along with this evolution of services. In addition, recent survey information from Current Analysis on cloud adoption trends, emerging technology concerns, and key market insights will be shared to provide perspective on the global cloud state and buying / adoption behaviors in the enterprise today.

Transitions and Transformations

Cloud computing is now a key part of every enterprise IT agenda in some form. Private, public and/or hybrid. IaaS, SaaS, and/or PaaS. Cloud access from smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, mobile devices and/or kiosks. The road to cloud is full of transitions and transformations, some easy, some hard. Some technical, some organizational. Some short-term, some long-term. In this keynote session, panelists will share their experiences with widely varying organizations, navigating the road to cloud – finding and avoiding the potholes and bumps in the road, smoothing out the transitions, and aiding/accelerating transformation.

For many, the most critical element in any mobile solution is the subscriber unit. The capabilities of handsets, tablets, notebooks, and a wide variety of specialized devices define much of how a given organization operates when mobile, and the implications for just about every aspect of IT, from apps to costs to support to security and much more, are enormous. This session will examine the options, variables, and key new developments in this vital space.

Large enterprises are using the AWS Cloud to run their existing applications, launch new applications, and as extension of their data center. In this session Paul Duffy, Sr. Manager, Solutions Architecture for AWS will provide an overview of AWS services and share how enterprises are taking advantage of the flexibility, security, agility, reliability and cost savings benefits of cloud computing. Joining Paul will be Ted Myerson, Senior Vice President, Global Head of Access Services for NASDAQ OMX who will discuss how the world’s largest exchange company is using the AWS Cloud to deliver transformative IT solutions for the financial services industry with NASDAQ FinQloud.

Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD, is perhaps the greatest sea change in mobility since the rise of wireless networks beginning almost three decades ago. While improved operational economies and user satisfaction are the goals, the challenges inherent in implementing an effective BYOD strategy are many. This session will explore how to construct effective BYOD polices and maintain security as organizational information finds its way to user handsets and other non-enterprise-owned devices.

Data growth seems inevitable, and as it does the tools and techniques we use to manage the data become more complex. Despite these improvements, somewhere between storing nothing, and everything is a place we, as IT practitioners feel comfortable. However, as big data technologies become more accessible we can ask questions of the data that we couldn't ask before, and the questions we can ask are limited only by the data that we store. Why don't we just store everything? And what might we discover if we did?

Learn how the nGenius® Service Assurance Solution provides the InteropNet with comprehensive, real-time network, application and service performance intelligence to assure optimized network and application performance and quality of experience. Through the use of multiple nGenius Intelligent Data Sources, Analysis Modules and Packet Frame Switch Technology, NetScout provides a unified service delivery management platform.

Big Data is not a new topic, but in the last few years, it has taken on much larger meaning with new tools and new paradigms. Come hear Jeremy Edberg, Lead Reliability Engineer for Netflix and former Information Cowboy for reddit, give an overview of the Big Data technology landscape with a mix of war stories and practical examples.

Click Here To Download Detailed Agenda

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

Data is going to be your biggest issue to deal with in the coming years. It's what needs to be replicated to stay running. It's what leaks when there's a security breach. It's what costs money to move around. And it's the cause of latency and usability issues. Compared to data, computing is easy. And as computing becomes a commodity in an era of clouds, we need to understand what it means to live in a Big Data world.

The Big Data Day is a new addition to Interop NY, giving enterprise IT professionals an inside look at the data revolution. We'll look at tools like Hadoop, Cassandra, Mongo, Riak, and R, as well as blended architectures that put Big Data alongside traditional Business Intelligence, helping business to get answers faster, scale better, and transition to a data-driven organization. We'll show you how to analyze your data more quickly, how to use that speed to spot upcoming trends, and how to prevent problems before they become problems. And we’ll look at use cases that show how companies are getting an edge in their markets through Big Data approaches.

Who Should Attend

•Data warehouse and BI professionals who want to know how Big Data tools like Hadoop fit into their toolbox
•Developers whose applications and aspirations are stymied by the limitations of traditional storage and processing
•Architects designing large-scale, real-time applications
•IT executives involved in governance, compliance, and creating organizations that run on data

Key Takeaways

•A taxonomy of Big Data and next-generation storage solutions
•Deep dives into some of the leading Big Data stacks from industry insiders
•Practical steps enterprises can take to embrace Big Data
•The difference between Big Data frameworks and services
•What's possible—and what's difficult—for companies that adopt Big Data approaches to storage and analysis
•How Big Data can make your business more successful

This session will be a brief introduction to the day, where we will lay out what we hope to accomplish and go over some of the basics of big data.

With mobility now essential to enterprises and organizations of all types everywhere, understanding the components, options, alternatives, and best practices that enable successful mobile implementations and operations is more important than ever. This session, which features some of the best-known and most-experienced analysts working the field today, will explore and debate key areas of mobility including wireless networking, mobile computing, operations management, and key recent developments in the field.

Among the key reasons businesses choose to pursue managed services are the need to consolidate multi-vendor relationships and solutions management, limited expertise in specific products and technologies, and reduction in their operational expenditure. Lines are blurring between traditional dedicated hosting and cloud computing services as customers increasingly want a consistent service level across both architectures, complete with comprehensive service level agreements (SLAs).This panel will discuss how Operators, System Integrators and Vendors can effectively use Cloud infrastructure to deliver managed services to their respective customers.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

Transitions and Transformations

Cloud computing is now a key part of every enterprise IT agenda in some form. Private, public and/or hybrid. IaaS, SaaS, and/or PaaS. Cloud access from smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, mobile devices and/or kiosks. The road to cloud is full of transitions and transformations, some easy, some hard. Some technical, some organizational. Some short-term, some long-term. In this keynote session, panelists will share their experiences with widely varying organizations, navigating the road to cloud – finding and avoiding the potholes and bumps in the road, smoothing out the transitions, and aiding/accelerating transformation.

This session will provide a brief overview of how IPv6 has been implemented in the InteropNet and how those concepts also apply to an enterprise network.

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.

Initiatives like cloud computing, agile processes, and devops still run on servers, storage, and networking. Many cloud, agile, and devops proponents try to commoditize and minimize the value of underlying hardware - in fact someone still needs to build and manage the infrastructure to enable faster, better, and more simple IT. The technologies that will be used in data centers in the next 12 to 18 months will be significantly impacted by what you decide today. New technologies in servers, storage, and networking can have a positive impact regardless of your strategic initiatives. In this panel, we’ll discuss what is on the horizon in data center technologies and how you can leverage them. Bring your questions.

Implementing server and/or desktop virtualization (e.g. VDI) has serious implications for the storage infrastructure. The requirements for storage are greatly affected and 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 and virtual desktops per physical server. This discussion will explain the implications of virtualized environments on storage and what attributes of storage systems 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.

Wi-Fi is the only wireless technology to effectively serve broadband data, voice, and video across the three key operational domains of the residence, the enterprise, and in public spaces. Growth continues at a remarkable pace, accompanied by new standards, specifications, performance, and applications. This panel will review key current and upcoming developments in this vital technology.

With the explosion of mobile devices and applications in the enterprise and the challenges brought on by bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives, mobility is becoming a key responsibility within IT. The desire to honor employee preferences regarding mobile devices must be balanced with IT’s responsibilities to manage and secure corporate data and systems.

While the initial feeling was that adequate management could be extended through push email tools like Microsoft’s Exchange Active Sync or Lotus Notes Traveler, organizations quickly learned that they needed more comprehensive tools like those being offered by the mobile device management (MDM) vendors. Now with the rapid uptake on those solutions users are discovering the vast range of mobile threat vectors including applications, operating systems, over-the-air snooping, wireless denial of service, and careless user behavior. Those threats are multiplied if those devices are used on cellular networks, in-house Wi-Fi networks, and public Hot Spots.

This program will provide the groundwork for developing, implementing, and maintaining a best practices mobility plan and policy. The major elements involved in ensuring mobile security and management including MDM systems, internal app stores, and self-service portals will be discussed, along with an overall program for how these systems must be developed in line with the specific business goals of the organization.

Who Should Attend

Enterprise mobility managers or anyone involved in the development or maintenance of enterprise mobility policies for BYOD implementations.

Key Takeaways

• A comprehensive understanding of the tools and techniques used to manage a mobile environment including MDM systems, app stores, guest portals, and the rest.
• Key areas to watch in the selection of a mobile device management solution.
• An update on the latest developments in mobile security involving networks, devices, data and applications
• A checklist of the major issues to be addressed in a mobility policy and the range of options we typically see considered
• A template to help your organization develop and maintain an effective mobility plan and policy for both corporate liable and individually owned mobile devices.

Unlike almost every other area of IT, when it comes to security, no organization is ever really done. And, despite major advances in mobile security standards and products and services, the need for every greater vigilance – and knowledge – will be with us for some time. This session will review the current challenges and important new solutions that enable mobility to increase in value without compromising the security and integrity of the enterprise itself.

With the explosion of mobile devices and applications in the enterprise and the challenges brought on by bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives, mobility is becoming a key responsibility within IT. The desire to honor employee preferences regarding mobile devices must be balanced with IT’s responsibilities to manage and secure corporate data and systems.

While the initial feeling was that adequate management could be extended through push email tools like Microsoft’s Exchange Active Sync or Lotus Notes Traveler, organizations quickly learned that they needed more comprehensive tools like those being offered by the mobile device management (MDM) vendors. Now with the rapid uptake on those solutions users are discovering the vast range of mobile threat vectors including applications, operating systems, over-the-air snooping, wireless denial of service, and careless user behavior. Those threats are multiplied if those devices are used on cellular networks, in-house Wi-Fi networks, and public Hot Spots.

This program will provide the groundwork for developing, implementing, and maintaining a best practices mobility plan and policy. The major elements involved in ensuring mobile security and management including MDM systems, internal app stores, and self-service portals will be discussed, along with an overall program for how these systems must be developed in line with the specific business goals of the organization.

Who Should Attend

Enterprise mobility managers or anyone involved in the development or maintenance of enterprise mobility policies for BYOD implementations.

Key Takeaways

• A comprehensive understanding of the tools and techniques used to manage a mobile environment including MDM systems, app stores, guest portals, and the rest.
• Key areas to watch in the selection of a mobile device management solution.
• An update on the latest developments in mobile security involving networks, devices, data and applications
• A checklist of the major issues to be addressed in a mobility policy and the range of options we typically see considered
• A template to help your organization develop and maintain an effective mobility plan and policy for both corporate liable and individually owned mobile devices.

Initiatives like cloud computing, agile processes, and devops still run on servers, storage, and networking. Many cloud, agile, and devops proponents try to commoditize and minimize the value of underlying hardware - in fact someone still needs to build and manage the infrastructure to enable faster, better, and more simple IT. The technologies that will be used in data centers in the next 12 to 18 months will be significantly impacted by what you decide today. New technologies in servers, storage, and networking can have a positive impact regardless of your strategic initiatives. In this panel, we’ll discuss what is on the horizon in data center technologies and how you can leverage them. Bring your questions.

What does 'carrier cloud' look like? How are telecom cloud providers marrying their network services and data center-based cloud compute, storage, platform and software services? What comprehensive cloud management and application migration strategies are needed to create and operate a carrier cloud and do existing tools and technologies come up to scratch? How can operators abstract and virtualize their networks so that they are as elastic as IT cloud automation platforms and what benefits will this deliver to them? What role will PaaS and SaaS play in the carrier cloud? This panel will address these questions and more in exploring the evolution of the carrier cloud.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

There are many choices facing network managers when choosing tools and techniques for planning and operating today's networks. Some of the options include Best of Breed or Integrated Suite? NetFlow or Packet Monitoring? Local or SaaS? Proactive or Reactive? Internal or MSP? And the stakes could not be higher - networks are returning to prominence as a critical piece of the IT infrastructure, and the expectations for reliability and sustained performance are ratcheting upward. In this debate-style panel, Jim Frey of Enterprise Management Associates will drive a lively discussion amongst management technology leaders who will look at the pros, cons, and major decisions points when selecting management approaches and strategies.

With mobility now at the very core of enterprise IT strategies, it’s vital to understand all of the technology elements that go into successful enterprise mobility implementations. This workshop will begin with a review of the motivations, opportunities, and constraints inherent in both wireless networking and mobile computing and a review of key wireless technologies. We’ll then proceed to an examination of the most important technical elements in contemporary wireless solutions, with a focus on Wi-Fi and LTE. We’ll devote special attention to operational management systems, including network management systems and related solutions. We’ll also explore key issues related to unified networking, the integration of mobile systems into existing network operations.

Who Should Attend

• IT management and staff – IT directors, managers, CIOs and senior staff
• Network planning and technology specialists
• Network operations management professionals
• Others allied to the field in finance, marketing, carriers and operators, technology developers, and product manufacturers and vendors

Key Takeaways

• Why wireless and mobility must be at the core of contemporary IT strategies
• Radio – how it works, why it sometimes doesn’t, and key technologies improving reliability and availability
• Wi-Fi – advances in 802.11n, 802.11ac, and related standards
• LTE and 4G wireless – key features and why they matter to IT
• Enterprise mobility management, network management, unified networking, and other key contemporary topics
• Subscriber units – current issues and opportunities
• What’s next for wireless and mobile in the enterprise

Notes: This session will cover products and services available today, defining and exploring each class of product and service in detail.

Want to know what’s next in wireless and mobile? Ask the senior managers who are betting their firms’ success on meeting your current and future needs in an environment dominated by both rapid technological change and fierce competition. And that’s exactly what we will do in this session, with time for your questions as well.

Google on Google: Embracing Innovation

As Google's CIO, it is Ben Fried's responsibility to provide the tools that will inspire people to work productively and creatively, and that reflect and reinforce the culture of Google's organization. In this session, you'll hear firsthand how Ben and Google's IT department recognize, identify, and deploy opportunities for innovation; leaving with new ways to empower your team and bring your company's culture to life through the products and services you offer.

With the skyrocketing global demand for IP addresses to accommodate an explosion in the number of Web-enabled devices, IPv4 addresses are about to run out. The Internet Address Number Association (IANA) distributed the last large (/8) block of IPv4 addresses on February 3, 2011. Air Force Network Integration Center (AFNIC) engineers are leading the Air Force's transition from the current IPv4 addressing format to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), and are laying the groundwork to ensure the switch happens seamlessly. While the transition will remain transparent to users, IPv6 will ensure continued global communications and enable new capabilities by providing a vastly larger number of network addresses to support new, intelligent appliances, sensors, logistics tracking, and latest state-of-the-art technologies. This session will provide the conference audience with a detailed look at the Air Force's current efforts on IPv6 transition, and how IPv6 will impact many more networked items than just desktop computers.

The last few years has seen a significant adoption of server and storage virtualization. The network, however, has remained static. The good news is that we are now seeing the first steps towards virtualizing the network and network services. The bad news is that there are a number of differing ideas as to what is meant by network virtualization. The panelists in this session will describe what they mean by network virtualization and identify the value that it provides to enterprise networks.

Telework, globalization, and mobility are changing how we define "work" and are tearing down barriers between individuals and companies. Products and services are rapidly entering the workplace. Social business and video bring new ways to interact with co-workers, partners and customers. New delivery models based on virtualization and the Cloud change the way we buy and deploy services. Finally, a successful implementation requires careful analytics to evaluate what is working and what isn't.

Navigating this new reality requires a roadmap that allows you to evaluate competing technologies, pick the best fits for your organization, and address integration, organizational, and management challenges.

During this interactive workshop we'll walk through the components of a successful unified communications and collaboration strategy. Using benchmark data gathered from hundreds of companies we'll show you what works, what doesn't, and what are the key criteria for evaluating success. We'll discuss how to address organizational and management strategies, how to extend collaboration services to remote and mobile workers, how to cross company boundaries, and how to implement new collaboration methods with respect to budgets and the installed base of platforms.

Who Should Attend

IT managers, telecom directors, collaboration managers, and anyone else responsible for integrating real and non-real time collaboration services.

Key Takeaways

* A solid understanding of key trends in unified communications and collaboration technologies
* Evaluate competing and complimentary services
* Evaluate service delivery models, extend services out to mobile workers
* Develop a roadmap that ensures success

Network layer throughput tests across Wide Area Network links are not necessarily an indication of application performance. Historically service providers test WAN links at Layer 2 or Layer 3 using test methodologies like those defined in RFC-2544. Newer test methods like those defined in RFC-6349 specify procedures for testing WAN links with stateful layer 4 traffic. This session details the legacy test methodologies, as well as more current test methodologies for testing WAN links both at service turn-up and in-service. Attend and learn how to ensure your WAN provider is testing your links using the latest test methods.

So much hype surrounds the data center’s PUE as a testament to green credentials. Theory goes, the lower the PUE, the greener the data center. But what is missing from that number? First off it doesn’t measure the total data center energy consumption – everything from the communications system to emergency lighting to powering the lunch rooms. Second, it doesn’t take into consideration the energy sources powering the data center. What happens if your data center is powered on green energy – is the PUE even relevant anymore? When the energy coming into the data center is 100% renewable the importance of the PUE diminishes and potentially changes the way we look at what really constitutes a green data center.

It’s no secret that data centers have an insatiable appetite for power…and finding a reliable source of available power is becoming a challenge as existing power grids are maxed-out with current demands. Moreover, finding a location that can meet green demands presents even more of a challenge. As a result, operators are starting to find greenfield opportunities in renewable power sources. By moving network commodity servers, like those used for the Cloud, to the most naturally efficient location, operators can meet demands and regulations while maximizing profits.

This session will discuss how to leverage data center sustainability by using alternative renewable energy sources such as geothermal and hydro power, which are relatively abundant and essentially inexhaustible. Specific topics to be addressed include:

• The optimal use of renewable energy
• Efficient data center system design, including facility design and software optimization, and how the PUE is impacted
• Determining proper physical infrastructure requirements for both IT load and hardware utilization
• Evaluation of power-efficient equipment options and cooling technology alternatives
• The role of virtualization within a data center

There is a natural link between cloud-based services and data-capable mobile devices. Applications for those devices can be located in the cloud and the data that drives those applications most certainly will be. But what role will telecom cloud providers play in the mobile realm in competition with companies such as Apple and Google? This panel will explore the possibilities, including service delivery platforms for mobile enterprise apps, the M2M market and applying cloud-based IT techniques, as well as virtualization, to storage, applications, collaboration and more for the mobile world.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

The level of innovation in wireless and mobile has never been greater – especially considering the long histories of these co-dependent fields. But new developments appear at an amazing pace, and this session will look at some of the most interesting and important. From improved wireless performance to new applications and lower costs, a knowledge of key advances in wireless and mobile technologies can yield huge benefits.

Those who promote cloud standards cite the ability to do the same everywhere, and thus provide portability for applications and data, and much more business value. However, we’ve not had a good track record when it comes to standards, and cloud computing seems to be on the same path. So, are cloud standards real? If so, which one should we pay attention to?

In this panel we will debate the value of cloud computing standards. What works? What does not? And what may work in the future? More importantly, advice on how you can create a cloud standards strategy for your enterprise.

So, what will be the future of cloud computing. Will it be big and bigger data? Cloud-based platforms that are expandable to a scale as yet unknown? In this panel we’ll address those questions and more. We’ll look well beyond the hype at the true future of cloud computing. What you can expect. When you can expect it. Come here to learn where to place your bets.

The NIST cloud computing definition has emerged as the consensus choice throughout the industry. This session will look at the current state of NIST adoption, evaluate how well providers meet the definition today, and discuss potential developments beyond the NIST definition foundation. With so much cloud computing ferment and evolution, we must be ready to move beyond NIST -- or are we?

Topics addressed:
The NIST cloud computing definition and its implications
The current state of CSP offerings vis a vis the NIST definition
Are there services or offerings beyond NIST that we should look toward?
How end users should use the NIST definition in their cloud computing initiatives

Every technology platform shift has occurred because, at bottom, it improves IT economics dramatically. Cloud computing promises vastly cheaper IT -- but does it deliver? This session will discuss the current state of cloud computing economics and some of the constraints IT faces when evaluating cloud computing ROI.

Topics addressed:

• Why is cloud computing supposed to be less expensive?
• Are public CSPs naturally less expensive than private clouds?
• KPIs for achieving optimum cloud computing economics
• Key challenges IT faces in evaluating cloud computing economics

The definition of a “desktop” has changed and today the term “desktop” has become a metaphor for all the devices, applications, services, and content to which users subscribe, both within the enterprise and in the cloud. Transforming the desktop of the past to the workspace of the future includes an ever-growing array of devices, choices, and policies - including tablets, smartphones, thin/zero clients, client hypervisors, virtual desktops, hosted applications, streamed applications, cloud-based services, BYOC and BYOD, with more options coming all the time.

Desktop and application virtualization technologies have matured significantly, offering better ways to deliver desktop and application services, ranging from VDI to session/presentation virtualization to streamed desktops to client hypervisors to Desktop as a Service. Tablets and smartphones have now surpassed desktops in number. New tablet and mobile devices continue to emerge and proliferate and Bring Your Own Computer/Device (BYOC/BYOD) initiatives are emerging everywhere, and need to be blended into overall end user computing strategies. As organizations consider the best strategy for transforming their user workspace strategy, IT has the opportunity to change the paradigm to support any user, any device, any application, any data, anywhere (with the appropriate security of course).

Until recently, multiple barriers prevented widespread adoption of desktop and application virtualization technologies, and in fact, many early desktop transformation projects failed as a result. This workshop will discuss the state of previous barriers and which ones have been eliminated, and how to successfully leverage today’s solutions to transform from the old desktop paradigm to user-centric computing and the workspace of the future.

We will cover desktop virtualization and transformation from the ground up, giving you everything you need to know to understand and assess your user requirements, develop a strategy, select the right products and technologies, and set the right policies for your needs. This transformation is much broader than VDI and it is critical to understand all of the available desktop, application, user virtualization and mobile technologies, and where/how they should apply in your environment. Learn about all the various options available today - from major virtualization vendors to emerging startups - and why one size does not fit all. Hear the latest about the available desktop, application, user virtualization and management technologies, how to assess user requirements across your entire organization, and determine how to successfully select and implement the right technologies for your organization.

Who Should Attend

This workshop targets IT managers and staff who are involved in the planning, implementation and support of desktop and application delivery through virtualization. It is geared for those interested in developing a deeper knowledge of virtual desktops, session/presentation virtualization, application virtualization, and user virtualization/personalization technologies to better design and implement a forward thinking strategy for desktop and application delivery and the workspace of the future within their companies.

Key Takeaways

• Understanding of the current state of desktop, application and user virtualization, including barriers eliminated, available technologies and solutions and how they map to various use cases
• Methodology for evaluating user requirements and determining which technologies and combined approaches are best suited for users' needs
• Insights into the interrelationships between desktop, session, application and user virtualization including the role of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) versus session virtualization technologies such as Citrix XenApp and MS Remote Desktop Services (RDS)/Terminal Services; client hypervisors and offline VDI; application virtualization technologies such as MS App-V; and the critical role of user virtualization and personalization
• Deeper understanding of the various approaches and architectures of the different desktop virtualization, application virtualization and user virtualization/personalization technologies
• Knowledge about end user computing access device choices (from tablets and smartphones to rich clients to thin clients to zero clients), how they fit into the new BYOC and BYOD initiatives, and how to integrate them into various approaches and technologies
• Information on the latest improvements in handling/integrating 3D graphics, video, and voice into the workspace
• Information on the new generation of tools for managing across Windows, web apps and SaaS apps and for file and data delivery/synchronization across devices

Comments from past Desktop Virtualization Workshop attendees

“Awesome... Incredible session.”

“Barb is an amazing speaker and incredible educator. She covered about a week’s worth of education in one day!”

“Very informational for researching. Well worth the time and cost to attend”

“Excellent session. Very informative. I highly recommend it to others.”

“Great Presentation. Excellent overview and good comments on practical application.”

“Barb was extremely impressive in her knowledge and I look forward to her next presentation.”

“Very interesting topic...my organization has a lot of research to do now, that we weren't even aware of prior to this. Thank you!”

“Very impressed with content and presentation.”

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

Throughout the workshop, we’ll be discussing how building private clouds requires a combination of infrastructure, virtualization, optimization, automation, management, orchestration, self-service portals, and service catalogs. In this closing panel, we'll discuss our panelists’ experiences with various building blocks, the options IT has today to transform their data center operations into IT as a service, and recommended best practices for successfully building private clouds.

Building Private Clouds: From “If” to “How”

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

As an industry, we've moved beyond the “if” discussion phase of cloud computing – It’s time for the real-world answers to “how”? How does one build a private cloud? How do automation and orchestration fit in? IT managers have to sift through the large and growing virtualization and cloud ecosystem and the plethora of virtualization and cloud management solutions to identify which functions are critical, which solutions are really ready for prime time, and which best match their particular requirements. How are the more established vendors addressing virtualization and private cloud and how do new cloud management tools integrate with and/or /utilize what organizations already have.

Whether you're building a private cloud to improve the efficiency of your data center or to deliver IT services more quickly, this workshop will arm you with the information you need to plan your private cloud environment.

Who Should Attend

This workshop targets IT managers and staff who are looking to fulfill the full promise of virtualization and cloud and transform their environments into a private cloud, especially around improving operational efficiencies, optimization, automation, and IT agility – delivering IT as a service or private cloud, while reducing costs.

Key Takeways

During this workshop, we will discuss the challenges that come with the move to private cloud computing, and how to prioritize, evaluate and implement the necessary solutions for virtualization and cloud management, optimization, automation and delivery as a private cloud.

Comments from previous Private Cloud Workshop attendees

“Excellent Excellent Excellent. The content, delivery, and applicability were spot-on. Barb is an incredibly knowledgeable asset.”

“Barb's presentation was truly outstanding. I've seen many about this topic and hers was one of the best.”

“Great content! Very helpful with some great information to take back to the company”.

“Best workshop of the show. Goldworm is amazing.”

“Very timely and relevant presentation to directly apply to current projects...”

“As a manger of engineers, I found the course packed with useful info that was presented clearly from an obvious expert in this area... well done.”

Server and desktop virtualization bring a slew of new acronyms, technologies, concepts and trends, and private clouds have muddied the waters even further. 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? Trying to understand the relationship between server virtualization and private clouds?
Part one of this crash course will give you the foundation you need to understand virtual infrastructure and its path to private cloud.

For part 2, we'll move on to desktop virtualization, transformation and BYOD - the latest buzz in virtualization. What do all these really mean and how are they related? There are a wide variety of virtualization technologies for delivering, provisioning and managing desktops and applications, and supporting new mobile devices and tablets. 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 and the relationship to clouds, this double session crash course is the one for you.

Many IT organizations are committed to advancing their virtual infrastructure and moving to private and hybrid clouds, but are unclear how to implement the steps to get there. This session will discuss how various IT organizations are building on their VMware infrastructure and adopting private and hybrid cloud computing, and will show how private and hybrid clouds can address a wide range of technology and business challenges. Discussion topics will include rationales for workloads in the private clouds vs public cloud, technical challenges, critical capabilities of cloud solutions and resulting value delivered to IT organizations and the business.

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.

Transitions and Transformations

Cloud computing is now a key part of every enterprise IT agenda in some form. Private, public and/or hybrid. IaaS, SaaS, and/or PaaS. Cloud access from smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, mobile devices and/or kiosks. The road to cloud is full of transitions and transformations, some easy, some hard. Some technical, some organizational. Some short-term, some long-term. In this keynote session, panelists will share their experiences with widely varying organizations, navigating the road to cloud – finding and avoiding the potholes and bumps in the road, smoothing out the transitions, and aiding/accelerating transformation.

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.

Virtualization has clear benefits for enterprises along with widespread adoption. But what about small to medium businesses? Do those benefits apply? Should SMBs do it themselves or should they look to service providers to take over? How does virtualization relate to the cloud and should SMBs be going straight to the cloud? And if so, should it be hosted private cloud or a public cloud?

Building upon the “Mobile Infrastructure Documentation Best Practices” session from Wed 10/3, this session will further provide insight into what to think about when evaluating whether a DCIM/ITIM solution will help manage your enterprise, organization or campus IT infrastructure. Using the documented delivery of the InteropNet as an example, we will explore how DCIM can benefit the management of your physical layer IT, network and facilities infrastructures.

Cloud Computing is the orchestration and formation of many distinct components into a single optimized systems environment. One of the significant hurdles that remains is managing across previously isolated technology disciplines and orchestrating these resources in a single cohesive model. Managing across these boundaries is not trivial, nor is the demand of real-time compute spin-up in this complex environment yet tools have emerged to address this challenge. In this session, you’ll hear from industry experts and vendors alike on the benefits and challenges of managing these diverse environments.

Wi-Fi is the only wireless technology to effectively serve broadband data, voice, and video across the three key operational domains of the residence, the enterprise, and in public spaces. Growth continues at a remarkable pace, accompanied by new standards, specifications, performance, and applications. This panel will review key current and upcoming developments in this vital technology.

Software-defined networking (SDN) is one of the most written about topics in IT because it holds the promise to fundamentally change how networking is done. There is some question, however, about whether or not there is any substance behind SDNs or are they largely a media event? In this two-part session, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) will describe both SDN and OpenFlow, including a discussion of the current status of the relevant standards and what changes you can expect to see over the next year. Jim Metzler will then present a detailed overview of how end users are approaching the deployment of SDN and he will also summarize the strategy of the leading SDN vendors. The biggest component of this session will be one or more end users describing why they implemented SDN, what they learned from their implementation and what their next steps are.

Break from 11:15 to 12:30

As Enterprises become more distributed, it becomes critical that the branch networks be ready for ubiquitous connectivity catering to new trends like BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). Services like bandwidth optimization, security, and support of the VoIP gateway are getting increasingly important in addition to wired and wireless access. This session will explore in detail the changing landscape and requirements for the new Intelligent Branch.

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.

Wi-Fi is the only wireless technology to effectively serve broadband data, voice, and video across the three key operational domains of the residence, the enterprise, and in public spaces. Growth continues at a remarkable pace, accompanied by new standards, specifications, performance, and applications. This panel will review key current and upcoming developments in this vital technology.

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.

Rapid adoption of the cloud and recent data breaches have everyone examining their service level agreements (SLAs) and inquiring about the integrity of their data in the cloud. Hear from a top security expert what should be in your SLA and what protocols you should have in place to keep your data secure. Cloud adoption isn’t just a technology decision. With important customer information being entrusted into the cloud, it’s all about data security. This session will help attendees understand the data security challenges and best practices when embracing the cloud. It also examines what to expect from a Security-as-a-Service provider in order to keep confidential company data secure.

Big Data is complex, moves fast and doesn’t fit typical database architectures. With the advent of Big Data, monitoring for network performance, security and compliance isn’t getting easier. Learn how advanced network monitoring switch technology provides both visibility and control of your network, even in your Big Data environment.

Driven largely by the need to support the flow of information between branch offices and data centers, many IT organizations have implemented WAN optimization controller (WOC) functionality. On a going forward basis, IT organizations looking to implement WOC functionality have a number of fundamental questions that must be addressed. One such question is should they implement WOCs themselves or should they acquire the functionality from a cloud provider. Should the WOCs be hardware based or software based? What is the best way to optimize the performance of public cloud services? In this session, end users will discuss what they see as the future of WAN optimization and give you the insight into what they have done to leverage the emerging functionality.

Over the past five years, the mobility management landscape has changed almost as much as the devices themselves. No longer are there one-size-fits-all mobility programs–rather, a wireless program must be custom-tailored to each enterprise and its employees. More important than ever is mobile policy, expense management, and deep analytics for a company to conquer the mobile revolution.

Because mobility is only getting more ubiquitous, this speech is a must hear for entire IT and Finance departments. This content will appeal to anyone interested in the future of mobility in the most progressive enterprises. It will help you understand where wireless technology is going and how you can best embrace it.

With mobility management one of the most important challenges facing the enterprise today, the options are wide ranging, and, dare we say it, confusing. Mobile Device Management (MDM)? Mobile Applications Management (MAM)? Mobile Expense Management (MEM)? Mobile Data Management (the other MDM) – and more? This session will make sense of all of the EMM landscape, helping you craft an effective solution with minimal overlap and maximum benefit.

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 speakers in this session are end users who will discuss how their campus LANs are changing in general and what they are doing to support BYOD in particular.

This session will provide a brief overview of how IPv6 has been implemented in the InteropNet and how those concepts also apply to an enterprise network.

The integration of IPAM, DNSSEC, DHCP, Peering, Scanning and Asset Management, provides for better workflow and system deployment. Learn how an all-in-one SaaS solution provides a significant value add to the InteropNet.

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.

Want to know what’s next in wireless and mobile? Ask the senior managers who are betting their firms’ success on meeting your current and future needs in an environment dominated by both rapid technological change and fierce competition. And that’s exactly what we will do in this session, with time for your questions as well.

Those who deploy applications and databases on cloud platforms find that some practices work, while others do not. It’s understandable that some trial and error will occur, but at this point we should begin to understand the emerging best practices that will insure successful cloud platform deployments.

During this panel our cloud platform experts will discuss the emerging best practices in cloud platform deployment, leveraging real world expertise rather than marketing hype. We’ll share approaches that get deployment right the first time, as well as which approaches to avoid.

Cloud computing adoption has created new challenges for enterprises, and Huawei’s elastic, easy-to-use, and open cloud fabric provides businesses a jumpstart to the cloud era with investment protection.

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.

The financial goals underlying an organization's business strategy are a fundamental component of successful partnerships within an organization. The most successful technical managers engage with their business partners through a shared language and a shared understanding of the organization's financial goals and requirements. Honing that understanding by learning about key financial terms and concepts increases cooperation and provides more opportunities for achieving success. As a business-focused manager, it is imperative that you are able to articulate how technical activities translate into financial benefits that impact the business, as well as how the business’s strategy can incorporate more effective technical support to achieve its goals.

Attendees will learn about:

• Budgeting, forecasting, and charging (not just for CIOs!)
• Converting time into money
• Including a return on investment in the business case
• Making the right business choice

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

Those who deploy applications and databases on cloud platforms find that some practices work, while others do not. It’s understandable that some trial and error will occur, but at this point we should begin to understand the emerging best practices that will insure successful cloud platform deployments.

During this panel our cloud platform experts will discuss the emerging best practices in cloud platform deployment, leveraging real world expertise rather than marketing hype. We’ll share approaches that get deployment right the first time, as well as which approaches to avoid.

Intensifying market pressures and growing frustration with legacy systems are driving business end-user and corporate executives to adopt a widening array of Cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. Rather than combat today’s “consumerization of IT” and “shadow IT” trends, smart IT professionals are working with their end-users and corporate executives to put policies and procedures in place to satisfy their changing needs. This workshop will provide insights into how leading IT organizations are helping their end-users and corporate executives better evaluate, select, deploy and maximize the value their SaaS applications. It will also identify a new generation of Cloud-based solutions which can help IT organizations manage these tasks and optimize their performance.

For many, the most critical element in any mobile solution is the subscriber unit. The capabilities of handsets, tablets, notebooks, and a wide variety of specialized devices define much of how a given organization operates when mobile, and the implications for just about every aspect of IT, from apps to costs to support to security and much more, are enormous. This session will examine the options, variables, and key new developments in this vital space.

Relying on video communication as a tool for business-to-business communication has historically been extremely challenging, especially if you need more security and quality of service than the Internet. Collaborating with customers, partners and distributors using HD quality videoconferencing is now as simple as dialing an access number and passcode. In this session learn how you can now videoconference more people in your value chain in more locations around the world to improve collaboration, productivity and competitiveness across numerous global MPLS networks, manufacturers, and device types. Video is about to become as easy as making a telephone call.

There are many choices facing network managers when choosing tools and techniques for planning and operating today's networks. Some of the options include Best of Breed or Integrated Suite? NetFlow or Packet Monitoring? Local or SaaS? Proactive or Reactive? Internal or MSP? And the stakes could not be higher - networks are returning to prominence as a critical piece of the IT infrastructure, and the expectations for reliability and sustained performance are ratcheting upward. In this debate-style panel, Jim Frey of Enterprise Management Associates will drive a lively discussion amongst management technology leaders who will look at the pros, cons, and major decisions points when selecting management approaches and strategies.

Advances in video technology, together with Moore’s Law, are driving video vendors toward positioning their products more as software than hardware. What does this evolution mean for enterprises that are seeing ever-increasing interest in video in multiple contexts—room systems, desktops, and mobile in particular? How is it affecting price/performance, interoperability, ease of deployment and use—and what are the implications for enterprises with large installed bases of legacy video systems that are more hardware-centric? This session will update you on the latest developments in video products, and will help you develop a plan for moving forward on video while protecting legacy investments.

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 and to enable both IaaS and SaaS as well as the dynamic movement of VMs. Unfortunately the WAN is not experiencing the same type of price reduction as is computing and storage resources. In this session, Jane Smith of beta, inc, (made up name) will discuss the emerging technologies that you can use to deploy a more efficient and effective WAN.

Want to know what’s next in wireless and mobile? Ask the senior managers who are betting their firms’ success on meeting your current and future needs in an environment dominated by both rapid technological change and fierce competition. And that’s exactly what we will do in this session, with time for your questions as well.

Advances in video technology, together with Moore’s Law, are driving video vendors toward positioning their products more as software than hardware. What does this evolution mean for enterprises that are seeing ever-increasing interest in video in multiple contexts—room systems, desktops, and mobile in particular? How is it affecting price/performance, interoperability, ease of deployment and use—and what are the implications for enterprises with large installed bases of legacy video systems that are more hardware-centric? This session will update you on the latest developments in video products, and will help you develop a plan for moving forward on video while protecting legacy investments.

Often the best way to design mobility strategies that work is to learn from the experiences of others. This panel provides exactly that – a look at what works (and what doesn’t) from those who have implemented mission-critical mobile solutions across a number of technology and application areas.

For a practical demonstration of dealing with the BYOD challenge, the InteropNet team, with support from Xirrus and Cloudpath, has developed a simple "Opt-In" BYOD demonstration network that is available for attendees to see how the theory is implemented in a live environment. This session will take you behind the scenes of the demonstration.

For a practical demonstration of dealing with the BYOD challenge, the InteropNet team, with support from Xirrus and Cloudpath, has developed a simple "Opt-In" BYOD demonstration network that is available for attendees to see how the theory is implemented in a live environment. This session will take you behind the scenes of the demonstration.

Relying on video communication as a tool for business-to-business communication has historically been extremely challenging, especially if you need more security and quality of service than the Internet. Collaborating with customers, partners and distributors using HD quality videoconferencing is now as simple as dialing an access number and passcode. In this session learn how you can now videoconference more people in your value chain in more locations around the world to improve collaboration, productivity and competitiveness across numerous global MPLS networks, manufacturers, and device types. Video is about to become as easy as making a telephone call.

Most major collaboration capabilities are now available as cloud-based hosted services—anything from PBX-style call control to video conferencing can be procured as a service instead of building it yourself off of CPE. So which functions are ready for prime time in the cloud, which are most cost-effective when purchased as a service rather than implemented as CPE, and what factors affect your decision-making process? In this session, we’ll look at a range of capabilities but focus on some of the core applications: Enterprise call control; contact center enablement; and video. You’ll hear from an independent consultant who has extensively studied the hosted communications market, and also from a representative of the Open Visual Communications Consortium. OVCC is an industry-wide group that has the support of most of the key players in video, and their efforts around openness and interoperability will be key to the provision of ubiquitous cloud-based video services.

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.. The session will review successes and failures from 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 regarding 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.

Unlike almost every other area of IT, when it comes to security, no organization is ever really done. And, despite major advances in mobile security standards and products and services, the need for every greater vigilance – and knowledge – will be with us for some time. This session will review the current challenges and important new solutions that enable mobility to increase in value without compromising the security and integrity of the enterprise itself.

Google has used Big Data for over a decade to power its business. Now it's making these capabilities available to any business looking to leverage the power of their data. This session describes the unique in-house technologies Google created (some of which gave rise to Hadoop) that enable it to effectively store, process and analyze massive amounts of data. Learn how customers are taking advantage of these services today to jumpstart their own businesses.

Innovation & Culture

Making stuff work was yesterday. Adding value is today. Creating value inside your little IT World is the future. How can you change your (and everyone else's) thinking? Discomfort and Disruption: The space between ones and zeros is where innovation lives. How can you create disruptive ideas when disruptive ideas make the organization uncomfortable?

As Einstein said, anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. How can you "Try? Fail. Repeat." in a productive way? Innovation in Small Bites: Innovation is baby steps, plus a few leaps. How can you get both? Building Small Cultures and Sprouts of Innovation the Design of Ideas: What is more than an idea but less than a finished product? Innovation.

How can you identify a good idea, develop it, evaluate it, make a convincing business case for it, and get others to buy into it, all in an afternoon? This is how.

Click Here For Detailed Agenda

IT management is undergoing a revolutionary change. The role of the CIO and other IT leaders is evolving due to critical business line pressures to adopt new technologies at a faster rate, globalize collaboration and integrate the next generation of innovators. This two-day summit will focus on issues the IT leadership community is facing in a collaborative environment, providing the opportunity to not only learn from instructors but also from your peers.

Innovation is no longer a nice to have but has become a corporate imperative in order to develop new markets, increase efficiencies and become relevant in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The need is particularly acute in corporate IT departments which are not only being tasked with innovation but need to support other department's initiatives. BYOD, cloud based resources, social media, mobilization and security and just a few examples of large scale shifts that will put increasing pressure on management to look at innovative approaches to implementation. Perhaps one of the most disruptive forces will not come from a new technology but from the next generation of employees.

45% of the world's population is under 25. As they enter the workforce, many will encounter corporate cultures that are fundamentally different than what they currently know. Will they embrace change, innovate around it, or get frustrated and simply leave? Gen Z (born 1995 or later) have never known a world where the internet did not exist, consequently their patterns of behavior, collaboration and innovation are unique. What can we learn about this generation and how can we garner a better understanding of their habits and preferences so that we might be better situated to absorb this potentially disruptive force. What can we learn about this group and their use of online communities, social technologies, and crowdsourcing to potentially help develop more socially oriented businesses that embrace innovation?

This session will provide participants a greater understanding of how innovative ideas can be efficiently formed, developed, and have a greater chance of being implemented. It will look at best practices across different industries to see what might be applicable (or not) to put together steps in developing a more innovative culture. It will also examine failures - why other initiatives where not successful and what might have been done to increase chances of success. Through a 2 day schedule of workshops, exercises and small group peer-to-peer discussions, participants will be involved in an immersive experience to understand innovation creation, risk, management and performance measurement.

All the preparation in the world doesn't matter if nothing happens. We'll look at how to take the next step, and the steps after that.

Click Here For Detailed Agenda

IT management is undergoing a revolutionary change. The role of the CIO and other IT leaders is evolving due to critical business line pressures to adopt new technologies at a faster rate, globalize collaboration and integrate the next generation of innovators. This two-day summit will focus on issues the IT leadership community is facing in a collaborative environment, providing the opportunity to not only learn from instructors but also from your peers.

Innovation is no longer a nice to have but has become a corporate imperative in order to develop new markets, increase efficiencies and become relevant in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The need is particularly acute in corporate IT departments which are not only being tasked with innovation but need to support other department's initiatives. BYOD, cloud based resources, social media, mobilization and security and just a few examples of large scale shifts that will put increasing pressure on management to look at innovative approaches to implementation. Perhaps one of the most disruptive forces will not come from a new technology but from the next generation of employees.

45% of the world's population is under 25. As they enter the workforce, many will encounter corporate cultures that are fundamentally different than what they currently know. Will they embrace change, innovate around it, or get frustrated and simply leave? Gen Z (born 1995 or later) have never known a world where the internet did not exist, consequently their patterns of behavior, collaboration and innovation are unique. What can we learn about this generation and how can we garner a better understanding of their habits and preferences so that we might be better situated to absorb this potentially disruptive force. What can we learn about this group and their use of online communities, social technologies, and crowdsourcing to potentially help develop more socially oriented businesses that embrace innovation?

This session will provide participants a greater understanding of how innovative ideas can be efficiently formed, developed, and have a greater chance of being implemented. It will look at best practices across different industries to see what might be applicable (or not) to put together steps in developing a more innovative culture. It will also examine failures - why other initiatives where not successful and what might have been done to increase chances of success. Through a 2 day schedule of workshops, exercises and small group peer-to-peer discussions, participants will be involved in an immersive experience to understand innovation creation, risk, management and performance measurement.

OK, go and be creative. Not so easy, is it? We'll look at a process that will help move your innovative thinking along productively

Enterprise IT departments get nervous when they consider the enormity and complexity of migrating IT functions to the cloud. Choosing a service provider and applications or platforms to transition are important tasks, but enterprises must also plan for the transformations their internal IT department will undergo. Forgetting about the people required to make it work is the greatest misstep companies can make. IT jobs shift when you migrate to the cloud, but they don’t go away.

When discussing cloud adoption in the enterprise, it's vital to discuss best practices such as architecture design, migration planning and ROI. We will show attendees how to assess their talent pool and prepare for the shift to next gen IT.

Network-based services that enable online transactions, information exchange and customer/constituent engagement are the critical information systems behind an increasing number of businesses. Underpinning all of these systems is the Internet infrastructure, a complex array of systems and protocols that enable the many Internet-based interactions we’ve come to take for granted. Beyond expanded scope and increasing complexity, the Internet infrastructure faces a growing number of threats, some systemic, others more targeted. A strategy that assures the availability and reliability of vital resources while protecting them and their data from malicious attack or breach should be at the core of any organization’s network operations and security plans. This session will explore some of the major trends related to both threats and security improvements around the Internet’s infrastructure, including Distributed Denial of Service Attacks, Domain Hijacking, Man-in-the-Middle Attacks, DNSSEC, and IPv6.

Information risk management and security is an ever changing and evolving concept and challenge. The threats that are posed to organizations and the risks they create are constantly changing and becoming more challenging. The solutions used to protect organizations against these threats and mitigate the risks they create are also changing and evolving. This panel discussion will look at the emerging trends in information risk management security from both a business and technological perspective.

As valued members of your organization, IT administrators work every day to keep your infrastructure up and available. But in today’s rush to contain operational costs, your IT administrators could be taking more shortcuts than you’d expect. And perhaps no aspect of IT suffers more from cutting corners than security. In this session, cybersecurity expert Philip Lieberman will show that fundamentally, the security of each organization hinges on how well IT balances convenience with controls and accountability. All too often IT is given free rein to operate under its own rules when it comes to security and resists working under the same types of controls that apply to others in the organization. The session will demonstrate that those organizations that work to bring IT into balance – introducing accountability through segregation of duties and adequate auditing controls while providing sufficient resources and incentives to provide proactive security – often come out ahead.

What makes software social and how can a risk averse corporate culture successfully utilize next generation of enterprise 2.0 technologies?

Crowdsourcing & Product Innovation

How do you overcome IP risks, data security breaches, and failed implementations in outsourcing product ideation to communities?

Click Here For Detailed Agenda

IT management is undergoing a revolutionary change. The role of the CIO and other IT leaders is evolving due to critical business line pressures to adopt new technologies at a faster rate, globalize collaboration and integrate the next generation of innovators. This two-day summit will focus on issues the IT leadership community is facing in a collaborative environment, providing the opportunity to not only learn from instructors but also from your peers.

Innovation is no longer a nice to have but has become a corporate imperative in order to develop new markets, increase efficiencies and become relevant in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The need is particularly acute in corporate IT departments which are not only being tasked with innovation but need to support other department's initiatives. BYOD, cloud based resources, social media, mobilization and security and just a few examples of large scale shifts that will put increasing pressure on management to look at innovative approaches to implementation. Perhaps one of the most disruptive forces will not come from a new technology but from the next generation of employees.

45% of the world's population is under 25. As they enter the workforce, many will encounter corporate cultures that are fundamentally different than what they currently know. Will they embrace change, innovate around it, or get frustrated and simply leave? Gen Z (born 1995 or later) have never known a world where the internet did not exist, consequently their patterns of behavior, collaboration and innovation are unique. What can we learn about this generation and how can we garner a better understanding of their habits and preferences so that we might be better situated to absorb this potentially disruptive force. What can we learn about this group and their use of online communities, social technologies, and crowdsourcing to potentially help develop more socially oriented businesses that embrace innovation?

This session will provide participants a greater understanding of how innovative ideas can be efficiently formed, developed, and have a greater chance of being implemented. It will look at best practices across different industries to see what might be applicable (or not) to put together steps in developing a more innovative culture. It will also examine failures - why other initiatives where not successful and what might have been done to increase chances of success. Through a 2 day schedule of workshops, exercises and small group peer-to-peer discussions, participants will be involved in an immersive experience to understand innovation creation, risk, management and performance measurement.

• Why might the next generation of incoming worker have the greatest potential to disrupt established IT processes?
• Communities and Business - businesses rely heavily on disparate communities, what would it take to bring these groups together around a common purpose?
• What are the best practices from companies making use of different communities internally and externally?
• How can the next generation of technologies (cloud, mobile, social) factor in to accelerating change?
• What are the obstacles that need to be overcome in order for these efforts to be successful?
  

Click Here For Detailed Agenda

IT management is undergoing a revolutionary change. The role of the CIO and other IT leaders is evolving due to critical business line pressures to adopt new technologies at a faster rate, globalize collaboration and integrate the next generation of innovators. This two-day summit will focus on issues the IT leadership community is facing in a collaborative environment, providing the opportunity to not only learn from instructors but also from your peers.

Innovation is no longer a nice to have but has become a corporate imperative in order to develop new markets, increase efficiencies and become relevant in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The need is particularly acute in corporate IT departments which are not only being tasked with innovation but need to support other department's initiatives. BYOD, cloud based resources, social media, mobilization and security and just a few examples of large scale shifts that will put increasing pressure on management to look at innovative approaches to implementation. Perhaps one of the most disruptive forces will not come from a new technology but from the next generation of employees.

45% of the world's population is under 25. As they enter the workforce, many will encounter corporate cultures that are fundamentally different than what they currently know. Will they embrace change, innovate around it, or get frustrated and simply leave? Gen Z (born 1995 or later) have never known a world where the internet did not exist, consequently their patterns of behavior, collaboration and innovation are unique. What can we learn about this generation and how can we garner a better understanding of their habits and preferences so that we might be better situated to absorb this potentially disruptive force. What can we learn about this group and their use of online communities, social technologies, and crowdsourcing to potentially help develop more socially oriented businesses that embrace innovation?

This session will provide participants a greater understanding of how innovative ideas can be efficiently formed, developed, and have a greater chance of being implemented. It will look at best practices across different industries to see what might be applicable (or not) to put together steps in developing a more innovative culture. It will also examine failures - why other initiatives where not successful and what might have been done to increase chances of success. Through a 2 day schedule of workshops, exercises and small group peer-to-peer discussions, participants will be involved in an immersive experience to understand innovation creation, risk, management and performance measurement.

Those who promote cloud standards cite the ability to do the same everywhere, and thus provide portability for applications and data, and much more business value. However, we’ve not had a good track record when it comes to standards, and cloud computing seems to be on the same path. So, are cloud standards real? If so, which one should we pay attention to?

In this panel we will debate the value of cloud computing standards. What works? What does not? And what may work in the future? More importantly, advice on how you can create a cloud standards strategy for your enterprise.

Those who deploy applications and databases on cloud platforms find that some practices work, while others do not. It’s understandable that some trial and error will occur, but at this point we should begin to understand the emerging best practices that will insure successful cloud platform deployments.

During this panel our cloud platform experts will discuss the emerging best practices in cloud platform deployment, leveraging real world expertise rather than marketing hype. We’ll share approaches that get deployment right the first time, as well as which approaches to avoid.

So, what are the killer cloud computing applications these days? It’s clearly Big Data in the lead, with elastic cloud-based storage moving quickly as well. However, massive scale is also an irresistible attribute of this technology. In this session we’ll review the emerging “killer” applications for cloud computing, or the patterns of use that are becoming game changers.

Killer applications for cloud computing have emerged, and we’re gathering value from them right now. However, where should we place our best applications in the future? What will be the next wave of killer cloud computing applications?

In this panel our experts will provide their take on the emerging uses for cloud computing platforms, including what will be hot for years to come. Come to this panel with your own ideas and concepts, and see if you agree with the experts’ take on the future of cloud computing.

What does the future hold for cloud computing platforms? What will the next IaaS and PaaS clouds look like? What about the emerging use of databases that are now on-demand? In this session we take a forward look at what the future holds for those that are leveraging cloud computing platforms, including emerging patterns and changing features of IaaS and PaaS clouds. Moreover, how IaaS and PaaS will be tightly coupled in the future, and the integration of database services as systemic to everything.

So, what will be the future of cloud computing. Will it be big and bigger data? Cloud-based platforms that are expandable to a scale as yet unknown? In this panel we’ll address those questions and more. We’ll look well beyond the hype at the true future of cloud computing. What you can expect. When you can expect it. Come here to learn where to place your bets.

Click Here To Download Detailed Agenda Cloud computing isn't about managing racks more efficiently; it's about making the organization more cost effective and agile. Early cloud adoption has focused on replacing infrastructure, but tomorrow's clouds will provide the foundation for creating mission critical applications that can be stood up in record time. Long hardware and software procurement cycles will become just bad memories, as well as limitations on quickly provisioning resources, without concern for scalability as the business grows. Your career as an IT professional depends on your ability to turn efficiently-managed infrastructure into a suite of tools that make the business better. Whether you're deploying development environments in your data center, or moving workloads around the globe, you need to move from boxes to true platforms. The ECS platform day is the place to understand this move up the stack and out into the public cloud, along with the opportunities and risks that such cloud platforms present. Who Should Attend • Developers considering where to build their next application. • IT operators who want to understand how to launch, manage, and move workloads across public and private infrastructure. • Architects who need to tune their infrastructure for greater uptime, faster performance, and lower cost. • IT professionals plotting their infrastructure and platform strategy. • Analysts and industry insiders hoping to understand and profit from on-demand computing. • Anyone who wants to make their business more agile. Key Takeaways • The state of public cloud platforms today. • How to survive the shift from boxes to services, and from infrastructure to platforms. • Creating a cloud strategy that works the first time. • Insider information around killer cloud computing applications, such as Big Data. • How to pick and choose among the emerging cloud computing offerings, looking beyond the hype to the true future of this technology.

As cloud computing evolves, there are new trends and patterns that begin to become interesting. In other words, why do we care about cloud computing? Also, where do we think things are going? In this session we’ll address the forward looking view of cloud computing platforms. What to expect. How you can take advantage today.

Unlike almost every other area of IT, when it comes to security, no organization is ever really done. And, despite major advances in mobile security standards and products and services, the need for every greater vigilance – and knowledge – will be with us for some time. This session will review the current challenges and important new solutions that enable mobility to increase in value without compromising the security and integrity of the enterprise itself.

Collecting and analyzing massive amounts of social data in real time is no small task. In the open source world, there is never a shortage of choices. For us to serve up real-time and historical analysis of that data, we integrate Redis, Mongo, Infobright, and Cassandra. We map reduce, aggregate, TTL and shard in multiple data centers and data stores across AWS. Finally, we wrap that up into a Node.JS API for speed, consistent access patterns, and fault tolerance. This makes up a full data access and storage suite. To use each data store effectively, you need to know which tradeoffs to make and what each data storage layer excels at. This talk is the evolution of the architecture, tools, capabilities, and lessons learned for our version of Polyglottany through the eyes of open source.

Security remains one of the biggest concerns for companies evaluating the cloud. In some cases, there is just cause, as cloud data breaches and privacy issues still abound among public and private cloud platforms. However, IT leaders should not reinvent the wheel when it comes to cloud security, and instead rely on proven and existing network security rules, policies and technologies. This panel of networking, cloud and security industry experts will break down the hype around cloud security and discuss how to leverage existing best practices in network security when moving to the cloud. Topics covered will include PCI compliance, access control rules, failover and disaster recovery, data encryption and more. For those IT professionals who want to put the cloud in the context of the network, this session is for you. This is a vendor agnostic session focused on best practices and open dialogue.

The future of cloud computing appears to be a joint private-public model thus far called “hybrid cloud.“ The integration of cloud and data center can occur at many levels: at the network, at the application, and in between. The technologies that will address these integration requirements take the form of bridges, brokers and gateways. Attendees will gain an understanding of hybrid cloud architectural models and the core technologies that address the integration of environments at various layers: bridges, brokers and gateways.

The last few years has seen a significant adoption of server and storage virtualization. The network, however, has remained static. The good news is that we are now seeing the first steps towards virtualizing the network and network services. The bad news is that there are a number of differing ideas as to what is meant by network virtualization. The panelists in this session will describe what they mean by network virtualization and identify the value that it provides to enterprise networks.

We cannot “firewall” or “patch” our way to secure websites. In the past, security professionals thought firewalls, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), patching, and privacy policies were enough. Today, however, these methods are outdated and ineffective, as attacks on prominent, well-protected websites are occurring every day. Organizations around the world rely on highly accurate, scalable and continuous Web security services to maintain the safety of their websites in today’s hostile online environment. Website developers must also learn to code in a secure fashion to have any chance of providing organizations with proper defenses in the current threat-scape. The session will provide specific tips and guidelines to make website code both low risk and less vulnerable.

With mobility now at the very core of enterprise IT strategies, it’s vital to understand all of the technology elements that go into successful enterprise mobility implementations. This workshop will begin with a review of the motivations, opportunities, and constraints inherent in both wireless networking and mobile computing and a review of key wireless technologies. We’ll then proceed to an examination of the most important technical elements in contemporary wireless solutions, with a focus on Wi-Fi and LTE. We’ll devote special attention to operational management systems, including network management systems and related solutions. We’ll also explore key issues related to unified networking, the integration of mobile systems into existing network operations.

Who Should Attend

• IT management and staff – IT directors, managers, CIOs and senior staff
• Network planning and technology specialists
• Network operations management professionals
• Others allied to the field in finance, marketing, carriers and operators, technology developers, and product manufacturers and vendors

Key Takeaways

• Why wireless and mobility must be at the core of contemporary IT strategies
• Radio – how it works, why it sometimes doesn’t, and key technologies improving reliability and availability
• Wi-Fi – advances in 802.11n, 802.11ac, and related standards
• LTE and 4G wireless – key features and why they matter to IT
• Enterprise mobility management, network management, unified networking, and other key contemporary topics
• Subscriber units – current issues and opportunities
• What’s next for wireless and mobile in the enterprise

Notes: This session will cover products and services available today, defining and exploring each class of product and service in detail.

With mobility now essential to enterprises and organizations of all types everywhere, understanding the components, options, alternatives, and best practices that enable successful mobile implementations and operations is more important than ever. This session, which features some of the best-known and most-experienced analysts working the field today, will explore and debate key areas of mobility including wireless networking, mobile computing, operations management, and key recent developments in the field.

Google has used Big Data for over a decade to power its business. Now it's making these capabilities available to any business looking to leverage the power of their data. This session describes the unique in-house technologies Google created (some of which gave rise to Hadoop) that enable it to effectively store, process and analyze massive amounts of data. Learn how customers are taking advantage of these services today to jumpstart their own businesses.

Software Defined Networks - Simplifying, scaling, and automating the network

The industry is increasingly moving to cloud computing environments. Software Defined Networks (SDN) promise to provide simplification, scalability and agility for customers to take advantage of this dynamic and virtualized world. But what is a true Software Defined Network and what is not?

Join Bethany Mayer, Senior Vice President and General Manager of HP Networking for a discussion that debunks the myths of Software Defined Networks and shares HP's vision for SDN.

To move your desktop operations to virtual desktops in the cloud, you need to consider key technical specifications as well as application and end-user requirements. Attend this session for a discussion of the key issues you should assess for a successful transition of your desktops to the cloud.

Relying on video communication as a tool for business-to-business communication has historically been extremely challenging, especially if you need more security and quality of service than the Internet. Collaborating with customers, partners and distributors using HD quality videoconferencing is now as simple as dialing an access number and passcode. In this session learn how you can now videoconference more people in your value chain in more locations around the world to improve collaboration, productivity and competitiveness across numerous global MPLS networks, manufacturers, and device types. Video is about to become as easy as making a telephone call.

Often the best way to design mobility strategies that work is to learn from the experiences of others. This panel provides exactly that – a look at what works (and what doesn’t) from those who have implemented mission-critical mobile solutions across a number of technology and application areas.

With mobility now essential to enterprises and organizations of all types everywhere, understanding the components, options, alternatives, and best practices that enable successful mobile implementations and operations is more important than ever. This session, which features some of the best-known and most-experienced analysts working the field today, will explore and debate key areas of mobility including wireless networking, mobile computing, operations management, and key recent developments in the field.

The concept of “Adapt or Die” has new meaning in the information age. Staying ahead of threats, vulnerabilities and their associated risks is a daunting task in even the best-funded and most mature information risk management and security (IRMS) programs. As risks increase and become a more critical factor in your business, you need to prepare appropriately to meet the challenges they create. If you don’t, you risk becoming a victim of ever evolving, highly motivated, and extremely capable adversaries who vigilantly wait for you to make a mistake before they strike. At the same time, you must meet the expectations and requirements of your Board
of Directors, business leaders and key stakeholders. This session will identify five ways that you can outsmart your adversary and enhance your information risk management and security capabilities.

Remember the movie "Tron"? In it, the main character's actions are limited to what the computer which he is trapped inside allowed. Until recently, this was also true about networking in the cloud: traditional networks were trapped in hardware implementations, bounded by the capabilities of switches and routers. Enter software-defined networking. SDNs allow you to break free of hardware contraints, by using software to define and build networks on demand, completing the trio of virtualization – compute, storage and networking. Come learn more about how this revolution in networking and cloud computing will shatter yet another barrier to entry for the cloud.

The New IT Agenda: Driving Business Innovation

BYOD. Cloud. Information proliferation. Strategic IT leaders are leveraging these market transformations for business advantage, increasing customer intimacy and operational excellence. To do so, CIOs and IT leaders must deploy dynamic infrastructure that allows the business to respond quickly to these new opportunities and easily roll out new services, while ensuring a consistent user experience and managing complexity. In this session, discover how the vision of "one policy, one management, one network" empowers IT to both accelerate innovation and ensure operational efficiency.

It’s no surprise that the technology landscape is changing again. Emerging technologies like social media, cloud computing and Voice over IP (VoIP) change the way we do business and interact with the network. They are also forcing us to re-think how we protect our organization’s information. While it has always been a challenge to keep information from leaving with portable media, various cloud storage options have made it much easier to quickly share large quantities data worldwide. Other types of cloud computing have made it easy for different groups within an organization to start their own Web service, outside the realm of a traditional IT organization and its security requirements. Social media is extending the reach of organizations by allowing them to interact in more structured ways with their customers. This opens the door to a variety of challenges that are involved with social media, including inadvertently exposing internal discussions to a customer base or beyond. Finally, VoIP is helping to extend the worker’s desktop to the home and on the road and outside of the protections of the internal enterprise network.

Syllabus

•Introduction: The Evolving Nature of Information Security
•Cloud Computing
•Software As A Service
•Storage In The Cloud
•Virtual Servers
•Social Media
•Facebook
•LinkedIn
•Twitter
•Applications
•Voice over IP
•Risks with SIP
•Ease of hijacking
•Protecting remote workers
•Policy Considerations
•Protections for extending the enterprise
•Problem dissection
•Risk Management ideas
•New Technology
•Final Thoughts

Who Should Attend:

• Individuals who have the responsibility to provide information security, risk management, and privacy services and capabilities within their organization

• Business executives who have the responsibility of designing, implementing, and operating information security and risk management programs within their organization

• Business executives who would like to understand the risks of emerging technologies and how to mitigate those risks

• Information technology or security auditors who are responsible for providing oversight to enterprise information security and risk management solutions.

Prerequisites

oFundamental understanding of information security and risk management concepts, goals, and techniques. No in-depth information security or technical background required.
oFamiliarity with the basic concepts and goals of information security and risk management.
oFundamental understanding of business requirements and benefits associated with information security and risk management programs and capabilities.

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.

Driven largely by the need to support the flow of information between branch offices and data centers, many IT organizations have implemented WAN optimization controller (WOC) functionality. On a going forward basis, IT organizations looking to implement WOC functionality have a number of fundamental questions that must be addressed. One such question is should they implement WOCs themselves or should they acquire the functionality from a cloud provider. Should the WOCs be hardware based or software based? What is the best way to optimize the performance of public cloud services? In this session, end users will discuss what they see as the future of WAN optimization and give you the insight into what they have done to leverage the emerging functionality.

The last few years has seen a significant adoption of server and storage virtualization. The network, however, has remained static. The good news is that we are now seeing the first steps towards virtualizing the network and network services. The bad news is that there are a number of differing ideas as to what is meant by network virtualization. The panelists in this session will describe what they mean by network virtualization and identify the value that it provides to enterprise networks.

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.

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 speakers in this session are end users who will discuss how their campus LANs are changing in general and what they are doing to support BYOD in particular.

Software-defined networking (SDN) is one of the most written about topics in IT because it holds the promise to fundamentally change how networking is done. There is some question, however, about whether or not there is any substance behind SDNs or are they largely a media event? In this two-part session, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) will describe both SDN and OpenFlow, including a discussion of the current status of the relevant standards and what changes you can expect to see over the next year. Jim Metzler will then present a detailed overview of how end users are approaching the deployment of SDN and he will also summarize the strategy of the leading SDN vendors. The biggest component of this session will be one or more end users describing why they implemented SDN, what they learned from their implementation and what their next steps are.

Break from 11:15 to 12:30

With the skyrocketing global demand for IP addresses to accommodate an explosion in the number of Web-enabled devices, IPv4 addresses are about to run out. The Internet Address Number Association (IANA) distributed the last large (/8) block of IPv4 addresses on February 3, 2011. Air Force Network Integration Center (AFNIC) engineers are leading the Air Force's transition from the current IPv4 addressing format to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), and are laying the groundwork to ensure the switch happens seamlessly. While the transition will remain transparent to users, IPv6 will ensure continued global communications and enable new capabilities by providing a vastly larger number of network addresses to support new, intelligent appliances, sensors, logistics tracking, and latest state-of-the-art technologies. This session will provide the conference audience with a detailed look at the Air Force's current efforts on IPv6 transition, and how IPv6 will impact many more networked items than just desktop computers.

Often the best way to design mobility strategies that work is to learn from the experiences of others. This panel provides exactly that – a look at what works (and what doesn’t) from those who have implemented mission-critical mobile solutions across a number of technology and application areas.

Reducing the cost of technology consistently stands in the top 3 things business owners want to accomplish. What are the benefits and drawbacks to cost reducing strategies, and is a new technology really able to cut expenses in half?

For the first time in the history of wireless communications, wide-area services are unified under a single universal technology known as LTE, or Long Term Evolution. But success using LTE isn’t a slam-dunk; a working knowledge of both the underlying technology and carrier deployments is essential before taking the LTE plunge – and that’s exactly what this session is all about.

The level of innovation in wireless and mobile has never been greater – especially considering the long histories of these co-dependent fields. But new developments appear at an amazing pace, and this session will look at some of the most interesting and important. From improved wireless performance to new applications and lower costs, a knowledge of key advances in wireless and mobile technologies can yield huge benefits.

The level of innovation in wireless and mobile has never been greater – especially considering the long histories of these co-dependent fields. But new developments appear at an amazing pace, and this session will look at some of the most interesting and important. From improved wireless performance to new applications and lower costs, a knowledge of key advances in wireless and mobile technologies can yield huge benefits.

Initiatives like cloud computing, agile processes, and devops still run on servers, storage, and networking. Many cloud, agile, and devops proponents try to commoditize and minimize the value of underlying hardware - in fact someone still needs to build and manage the infrastructure to enable faster, better, and more simple IT. The technologies that will be used in data centers in the next 12 to 18 months will be significantly impacted by what you decide today. New technologies in servers, storage, and networking can have a positive impact regardless of your strategic initiatives. In this panel, we’ll discuss what is on the horizon in data center technologies and how you can leverage them. Bring your questions.

So much hype surrounds the data center’s PUE as a testament to green credentials. Theory goes, the lower the PUE, the greener the data center. But what is missing from that number? First off it doesn’t measure the total data center energy consumption – everything from the communications system to emergency lighting to powering the lunch rooms. Second, it doesn’t take into consideration the energy sources powering the data center. What happens if your data center is powered on green energy – is the PUE even relevant anymore? When the energy coming into the data center is 100% renewable the importance of the PUE diminishes and potentially changes the way we look at what really constitutes a green data center.

It’s no secret that data centers have an insatiable appetite for power…and finding a reliable source of available power is becoming a challenge as existing power grids are maxed-out with current demands. Moreover, finding a location that can meet green demands presents even more of a challenge. As a result, operators are starting to find greenfield opportunities in renewable power sources. By moving network commodity servers, like those used for the Cloud, to the most naturally efficient location, operators can meet demands and regulations while maximizing profits.

This session will discuss how to leverage data center sustainability by using alternative renewable energy sources such as geothermal and hydro power, which are relatively abundant and essentially inexhaustible. Specific topics to be addressed include:

• The optimal use of renewable energy
• Efficient data center system design, including facility design and software optimization, and how the PUE is impacted
• Determining proper physical infrastructure requirements for both IT load and hardware utilization
• Evaluation of power-efficient equipment options and cooling technology alternatives
• The role of virtualization within a data center

What goes into designing, building and operating a cloud computing environment? The answer is highly-dependent upon the purpose for the cloud, consumer audience, deployment model, skills and facilities. Best practices are emerging for each of these phases that will satisfy a majority of cases, but requires adaption across your people, processes and technologies. This session will outline commonly used best practices for designing, building and operating cloud environments and provide a checklist of items for consideration.

Killer applications for cloud computing have emerged, and we’re gathering value from them right now. However, where should we place our best applications in the future? What will be the next wave of killer cloud computing applications?

In this panel our experts will provide their take on the emerging uses for cloud computing platforms, including what will be hot for years to come. Come to this panel with your own ideas and concepts, and see if you agree with the experts’ take on the future of cloud computing.

So, what will be the future of cloud computing. Will it be big and bigger data? Cloud-based platforms that are expandable to a scale as yet unknown? In this panel we’ll address those questions and more. We’ll look well beyond the hype at the true future of cloud computing. What you can expect. When you can expect it. Come here to learn where to place your bets.

Cloud computing is one of the most strategic initiatives that enterprises will adopt over the next several years. Only an open hybrid cloud can help you unlock the full benefits of cloud economics and gain agility across your entire infrastructure – physical, virtual and public cloud resources included.

Erich Morisse, Product Manager at Red Hat, explains how open standards, open APIs and open source software are changing the structure of an enterprise cloud. Additionally, you will benefit from:

• An overview of Red Hat’s overall cloud portfolio, from Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Red Hat CloudForms and Red Hat OpenShift
• Discussing how you can work with Red Hat across its offerings to build an open cloud
• An introduction to strategies and approaches to adopting the cloud that have worked well with other customers and partners
• Hearing about Red Hat’s overall plans and roadmap for cloud computing

Click Here For Detailed Agenda

IT management is undergoing a revolutionary change. The role of the CIO and other IT leaders is evolving due to critical business line pressures to adopt new technologies at a faster rate, globalize collaboration and integrate the next generation of innovators. This two-day summit will focus on issues the IT leadership community is facing in a collaborative environment, providing the opportunity to not only learn from instructors but also from your peers.

Innovation is no longer a nice to have but has become a corporate imperative in order to develop new markets, increase efficiencies and become relevant in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The need is particularly acute in corporate IT departments which are not only being tasked with innovation but need to support other department's initiatives. BYOD, cloud based resources, social media, mobilization and security and just a few examples of large scale shifts that will put increasing pressure on management to look at innovative approaches to implementation. Perhaps one of the most disruptive forces will not come from a new technology but from the next generation of employees.

45% of the world's population is under 25. As they enter the workforce, many will encounter corporate cultures that are fundamentally different than what they currently know. Will they embrace change, innovate around it, or get frustrated and simply leave? Gen Z (born 1995 or later) have never known a world where the internet did not exist, consequently their patterns of behavior, collaboration and innovation are unique. What can we learn about this generation and how can we garner a better understanding of their habits and preferences so that we might be better situated to absorb this potentially disruptive force. What can we learn about this group and their use of online communities, social technologies, and crowdsourcing to potentially help develop more socially oriented businesses that embrace innovation?

This session will provide participants a greater understanding of how innovative ideas can be efficiently formed, developed, and have a greater chance of being implemented. It will look at best practices across different industries to see what might be applicable (or not) to put together steps in developing a more innovative culture. It will also examine failures - why other initiatives where not successful and what might have been done to increase chances of success. Through a 2 day schedule of workshops, exercises and small group peer-to-peer discussions, participants will be involved in an immersive experience to understand innovation creation, risk, management and performance measurement.

… A Strategy & Tool Kit for IT Culture Change Leadership

Motivation & Knowledge Workers
Motivation of Knowledge Workers: Think Pink & Green
Pink Video & Self-Assessment

Talent Retention and the Role of Place (Geography)
… The Talent Acquisition Balancing Act

Reward Success & Failure: Punish Inaction

What is Organizational Culture? Why is it so important?

• Self-Assessment (Flexibility -- Stability versus Closed – Open)
• Inclusion-based Innovation aka Diversity Drives Innovation: IW 500
• Cultural Links to Financial Performance: 100 Best Places To Work

Design Thinking as an IT Culture Change Leadership Strategy & Tool Box: The Wisdom of Roger Martin

Click Here For Detailed Agenda

IT management is undergoing a revolutionary change. The role of the CIO and other IT leaders is evolving due to critical business line pressures to adopt new technologies at a faster rate, globalize collaboration and integrate the next generation of innovators. This two-day summit will focus on issues the IT leadership community is facing in a collaborative environment, providing the opportunity to not only learn from instructors but also from your peers.

Innovation is no longer a nice to have but has become a corporate imperative in order to develop new markets, increase efficiencies and become relevant in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The need is particularly acute in corporate IT departments which are not only being tasked with innovation but need to support other department's initiatives. BYOD, cloud based resources, social media, mobilization and security and just a few examples of large scale shifts that will put increasing pressure on management to look at innovative approaches to implementation. Perhaps one of the most disruptive forces will not come from a new technology but from the next generation of employees.

45% of the world's population is under 25. As they enter the workforce, many will encounter corporate cultures that are fundamentally different than what they currently know. Will they embrace change, innovate around it, or get frustrated and simply leave? Gen Z (born 1995 or later) have never known a world where the internet did not exist, consequently their patterns of behavior, collaboration and innovation are unique. What can we learn about this generation and how can we garner a better understanding of their habits and preferences so that we might be better situated to absorb this potentially disruptive force. What can we learn about this group and their use of online communities, social technologies, and crowdsourcing to potentially help develop more socially oriented businesses that embrace innovation?

This session will provide participants a greater understanding of how innovative ideas can be efficiently formed, developed, and have a greater chance of being implemented. It will look at best practices across different industries to see what might be applicable (or not) to put together steps in developing a more innovative culture. It will also examine failures - why other initiatives where not successful and what might have been done to increase chances of success. Through a 2 day schedule of workshops, exercises and small group peer-to-peer discussions, participants will be involved in an immersive experience to understand innovation creation, risk, management and performance measurement.

For the first time in the history of wireless communications, wide-area services are unified under a single universal technology known as LTE, or Long Term Evolution. But success using LTE isn’t a slam-dunk; a working knowledge of both the underlying technology and carrier deployments is essential before taking the LTE plunge – and that’s exactly what this session is all about.

Burdened with the demands of consumerization, executives across the globe feel peer and competitive pressure to “get to yes” on private cloud. Unfortunately, there have so far been few enterprise examples of successful deployments with a true private cloud in place and even fewer standard best practices. In this session, Forrester analyst Lauren Nelson presents multiple enterprise private cloud examples and dives into some key issues faced in the deployment and management process. If you're planning to build or already have a private cloud deployment in place, this session is a must and will cover:

• Current Forrester data on private cloud adoption and usage.
• Case studies of private cloud deployments.
• Recommendations for addressing common private cloud challenges.
  

Many IT organizations are committed to advancing their virtual infrastructure and moving to private and hybrid clouds, but are unclear how to implement the steps to get there. This session will discuss how various IT organizations are building on their VMware infrastructure and adopting private and hybrid cloud computing, and will show how private and hybrid clouds can address a wide range of technology and business challenges. Discussion topics will include rationales for workloads in the private clouds vs public cloud, technical challenges, critical capabilities of cloud solutions and resulting value delivered to IT organizations and the business.

Moving beyond the basic packet capture and filtering operation of the Wireshark protocol analyzer, this class will focus on in-depth protocol analysis. The use of advanced filtering techniques, IO Graphs, data interpretation will be demonstrated. The focus of this class is to turn those captured packets into troubleshooting results. Example trace files will be provided during the class to allow the attendees to follow along with the instructor.

• Advanced Packet Capture Techniques
• Using IO Graphs to get the big picture
• In-Depth Protocol Analysis
• VoIP Analysis
• Exporting Data
• Using Colorization Rules to quickly identify packets of interest
• Use of Profiles for protocol specific analysis

Who Should Attend

Network Administrators, Network Engineers, Network Managers, Application Developers

Key Takeaways

• Getting the right packets in the capture buffer the first time
• Ability to quickly eliminate packets that are not part of the problem
• Distinguish improper protocol behavior from proper behavior
• Ability to analyze and playback VoIP traffic

Concerns about inadequate information security remains the #1 obstacle to greater adoption of Cloud Computing. Organizations building Private Clouds, and deploying their applications and data to them, need the ability to assess security standards, trust security implementations, and prove infrastructure compliance to auditors.

This session will describe some of the security risks and challenges when adopting private architectures and strategies. and will provide guidance for mitigating risk and adopting solutions that enable trust and compliance, including an overview of the ecosystem landscape for Private Cloud Security detailing key categories and solution stacks.

Remember the movie "Tron"? In it, the main character's actions are limited to what the computer which he is trapped inside allowed. Until recently, this was also true about networking in the cloud: traditional networks were trapped in hardware implementations, bounded by the capabilities of switches and routers. Enter software-defined networking. SDNs allow you to break free of hardware contraints, by using software to define and build networks on demand, completing the trio of virtualization – compute, storage and networking. Come learn more about how this revolution in networking and cloud computing will shatter yet another barrier to entry for the cloud.

With mobility management one of the most important challenges facing the enterprise today, the options are wide ranging, and, dare we say it, confusing. Mobile Device Management (MDM)? Mobile Applications Management (MAM)? Mobile Expense Management (MEM)? Mobile Data Management (the other MDM) – and more? This session will make sense of all of the EMM landscape, helping you craft an effective solution with minimal overlap and maximum benefit.

The Unified Communications market is experiencing a familiar dynamic around multi-vendor interoperability: Vendors say they have it, customers say they don’t. So which is closer to the truth—how much interoperability is really out there? This session will help you understand the degree to which different vendors’ UC elements work together, and how much integration work has to be done to make products work together. Specifically, we’ll look at the issues of federation and interworking—which tend to be one-off arrangements between pairs of vendors—versus true interoperability, in which standards compliance allows for actual plug-and-play deployment of any vendor’s product into an existing system. Leading consultants/analysts will give you a detailed breakdown of which products interoperate, and where (if anywhere) there is true interoperability.

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.

Moving beyond the basic packet capture and filtering operation of the Wireshark protocol analyzer, this class will focus on in-depth protocol analysis. The use of advanced filtering techniques, IO Graphs, data interpretation will be demonstrated. The focus of this class is to turn those captured packets into troubleshooting results. Example trace files will be provided during the class to allow the attendees to follow along with the instructor.

• Advanced Packet Capture Techniques
• Using IO Graphs to get the big picture
• In-Depth Protocol Analysis
• VoIP Analysis
• Exporting Data
• Using Colorization Rules to quickly identify packets of interest
• Use of Profiles for protocol specific analysis

Who Should Attend

Network Administrators, Network Engineers, Network Managers, Application Developers

Key Takeaways

• Getting the right packets in the capture buffer the first time
• Ability to quickly eliminate packets that are not part of the problem
• Distinguish improper protocol behavior from proper behavior
• Ability to analyze and playback VoIP traffic

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

• Overview of the Internet Protocol Operation
• Troubleshooting Techniques for the Internet Protocol
• Overview of the Transmission Control Protocol Operation
• Troubleshooting Techniques for the Transmission Control Protocol
• Optimizing data transfers over Wide Area Network connections

Who Should Attend

Network Administrators, Network Engineers, Network Managers, Application Developers

Key Takeaways

• How to optimize TCP performance
• roubleshoot IP communication problems
• Measure throughput over LAN and WAN links
• Isolate and troubleshoot IP and TCP related problems

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

• Overview of Ethernet Operation
• Ethernet Errors
• Ethernet Switch Operation
• Testing Ethernet and Switch Performance
• Troubleshooting Ethernet Errors
• VLAN Operation

Who Should Attend

Network Administrators, Network Engineers, Network Managers

Key Takeaways

• Understanding of Ethernet Operation
• Ability to measure Ethernet performance
• How to isolate and troubleshoot Ethernet Errors

Want to know what’s next in wireless and mobile? Ask the senior managers who are betting their firms’ success on meeting your current and future needs in an environment dominated by both rapid technological change and fierce competition. And that’s exactly what we will do in this session, with time for your questions as well.

As with the emergence of any new technology, Cloud has brought more than its fair share of issues. First there is the human impact of cultural shifts, talent management, and organizational change. Secondly, the technology implications of security, operational process changes, and governance hurdles. Finally, there is the business side of economics, continuity, and alignment. Making all of this work is can be a daunting task, but there are many who have successfully navigated these waters and can share insights on key issues they’ve encountered and how they resolved them.

Many SAP customers have already started on their journey to the cloud, and there are still others who are considering the use of cloud technology as an option to run their SAP NetWeaver and SAP Business Suite applications. Our innovative approach to deploying SAP virtual appliances into the cloud provides the ability to immediately leverage the potential of preassembled, preconfigured SAP solutions, run instant demos, and pilot new SAP technologies without any delay. In this session you will learn about the key concepts of the on-demand solution "Project Titanium", together with virtual appliances from the virtual appliance factory (VAF) repository as a means of accelerating this journey.

You will also hear Virtustream, one of SAP’s certified cloud service providers, discuss the business and technical factors that should be considered when moving enterprise applications like SAP to the cloud. General guidelines and principles will be supported with real life customer examples who have benefited from Virtustream’s expertise in helping customers move from on-premise installations to cloud-based implementations.

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 and security aware culture is the 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 workshop will focus on the key concepts and capabilities that should be considered when creating a risk aware and security conscious culture. Approaches, considerations, techniques, and case studies of organizations that are in process of or have successfully created this type of culture will be presented throughout the session as well as discussions of current industry leading concepts and practices.

This workshop will also include an in-depth discussion of threat and vulnerability analysis. This will include a concept overview, methodology, instructional walk through, and case studies.

Agenda

• Using Risk Management to Remove the Fear of Security
• Risk Management and Security vs. Security and Risk Management
• Business and Information Risk Profile
• Fighting the Hype Cycle
• Security by Compliance – Fear the Auditor more than the Attacker
• Polices and Standards First, Controls and Technology Second
• Focus on The Protection Data and Business Process Not Technology
• Data Classification
• Users – Your Greatest Asset and Most Challenging Adversary
• Trust by Verify
• Oversight Board – Removing the Perception of the Ivory Tower
• Winning the Hearts and Minds
• Embrace but Educate – Turning No into Yes
• Personal Benefits
• Effective Reinforcement Methods
• Focus on What Really Matters – Threat and Vulnerability Analysis
• Effectively Managing Risk – Control Objectives and Controls
• Final Thoughts

Who Should Attend

o Individuals who would like to understand how to effectively develop and implement Information Security and Risk Management strategy.
o Business leaders who are responsible for information Security and Risk Management within their organizations.
o Information security auditors and professionals who are responsible for providing oversight to Information Security and Risk Management solutions within an organization.
o IT Governance professionals who are developing and maturing their organizations capabilities.


Key Takeaways

• Key considerations when creating a risk aware and security conscious culture
• How to use risk management as a concept and tool to remove the fear of security in organizations
• The value and benefits of developing an information risk profile
• Understanding of the current behaviors of organizations and whey they exist in regard to information security
• Effective approaches to change behaviors and culture within organizations
• How to leverage users effectively as an beneficial asset in supporting risk management and security activities
• How to use threat and vulnerability analysis to identify and educate organizations on business impacting threats
• Using control objectives as an approach to effectively manage information risk in a way that will be embraced by organizations.

Prerequisites

o Fundamental understanding of Information Risk Management and Security
o Basic understanding of organizational behavior and reasons for their resistance in implementing and embracing information risk management and security concepts and capabilities.
o Knowledge of business, compliance, and regulatory requirements associated with Information Security and Risk Management

Taking advantage of the lessons learned by others can help you succeed by repeating what worked and avoiding what didn’t. Information Risk Management and Security (IRMS) is a rapidly evolving capability and concept within many organizations. The
pace in which organizations are implementing these capabilities
and programs creates the opportunity for even the most seasoned CISOs to make mistakes as they try to meet the expectations of their leadership and stakeholders. Learn about five of the most common key IRMS mistakes that you should avoid.

Information risk management and security is an ever changing and evolving concept and challenge. The threats that are posed to organizations and the risks they create are constantly changing and becoming more challenging. The solutions used to protect organizations against these threats and mitigate the risks they create are also changing and evolving. This panel discussion will look at the emerging trends in information risk management security from both a business and technological perspective.

Most major collaboration capabilities are now available as cloud-based hosted services—anything from PBX-style call control to video conferencing can be procured as a service instead of building it yourself off of CPE. So which functions are ready for prime time in the cloud, which are most cost-effective when purchased as a service rather than implemented as CPE, and what factors affect your decision-making process? In this session, we’ll look at a range of capabilities but focus on some of the core applications: Enterprise call control; contact center enablement; and video. You’ll hear from an independent consultant who has extensively studied the hosted communications market, and also from a representative of the Open Visual Communications Consortium. OVCC is an industry-wide group that has the support of most of the key players in video, and their efforts around openness and interoperability will be key to the provision of ubiquitous cloud-based video services.

Advances in video technology, together with Moore’s Law, are driving video vendors toward positioning their products more as software than hardware. What does this evolution mean for enterprises that are seeing ever-increasing interest in video in multiple contexts—room systems, desktops, and mobile in particular? How is it affecting price/performance, interoperability, ease of deployment and use—and what are the implications for enterprises with large installed bases of legacy video systems that are more hardware-centric? This session will update you on the latest developments in video products, and will help you develop a plan for moving forward on video while protecting legacy investments.

Most major collaboration capabilities are now available as cloud-based hosted services—anything from PBX-style call control to video conferencing can be procured as a service instead of building it yourself off of CPE. So which functions are ready for prime time in the cloud, which are most cost-effective when purchased as a service rather than implemented as CPE, and what factors affect your decision-making process? In this session, we’ll look at a range of capabilities but focus on some of the core applications: Enterprise call control; contact center enablement; and video. You’ll hear from an independent consultant who has extensively studied the hosted communications market, and also from a representative of the Open Visual Communications Consortium. OVCC is an industry-wide group that has the support of most of the key players in video, and their efforts around openness and interoperability will be key to the provision of ubiquitous cloud-based video services.

Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD, is perhaps the greatest sea change in mobility since the rise of wireless networks beginning almost three decades ago. While improved operational economies and user satisfaction are the goals, the challenges inherent in implementing an effective BYOD strategy are many. This session will explore how to construct effective BYOD polices and maintain security as organizational information finds its way to user handsets and other non-enterprise-owned devices.

There are many choices facing network managers when choosing tools and techniques for planning and operating today's networks. Some of the options include Best of Breed or Integrated Suite? NetFlow or Packet Monitoring? Local or SaaS? Proactive or Reactive? Internal or MSP? And the stakes could not be higher - networks are returning to prominence as a critical piece of the IT infrastructure, and the expectations for reliability and sustained performance are ratcheting upward. In this debate-style panel, Jim Frey of Enterprise Management Associates will drive a lively discussion amongst management technology leaders who will look at the pros, cons, and major decisions points when selecting management approaches and strategies.

Driven largely by the need to support the flow of information between branch offices and data centers, many IT organizations have implemented WAN optimization controller (WOC) functionality. On a going forward basis, IT organizations looking to implement WOC functionality have a number of fundamental questions that must be addressed. One such question is should they implement WOCs themselves or should they acquire the functionality from a cloud provider. Should the WOCs be hardware based or software based? What is the best way to optimize the performance of public cloud services? In this session, end users will discuss what they see as the future of WAN optimization and give you the insight into what they have done to leverage the emerging functionality.

Faced with rapidly changing technologies and continuing pressures to deliver IT services in tune with business demands, IT leaders need to find the right people with the right skillset for open positions. According to the newest research from HDI and Robert Half Technology, the war for talent continues to be a challenge. Jenny will reveal the key research results which answer questions about finding the right people with the right skills, recruiting strategies, reasons for turnover, factors that influence longer staff retention and satisfaction, and a look at the skillset profile for the future. Within each area of the results, she will share recommendations and practical tips to meet the challenges to recruit and keep top performers in your organization.

Highlights:

•The scope of war for talent challenge
•Identify skill sets and job responsibilities that are the most important, as well as the most difficult to find
•Identify the benefits and incentives that are needed to recruit and hire
•Uncover turnover rates and key reasons for turnover and retention
•Discover the workplace components that lead to highly satisfied employees
•Build a skillset profile for the future

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

Agenda

Day 1
•How to develop a new framework for the business of IT
•How to formalize policies and processes and put them into practice
•How to map the organization to meet the demands of global, 24x7 business
•How to define projects and ensure end user satisfaction and IT recognition

Day 2
•How to manage end user and management expectations
•How to engage stakeholders as accountable parties in critical decisions
•How to build executive management commitment
•How to manage critical vendor relationships
•How to make it all happen through consideration of multiple sourcing options

Who Should Attend

•Directors and managers of IT organizations or units
•IT and IS professionals
•Anyone who needs to realign IT with the business

Key Takeaway

Principles that can develop or enhance your own IT policies, processes, organization, and practices, thus creating a more effective IT business unit.

Feedback from previous Principals of Effective IT Management participants.

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

Agenda

Day 1
•How to develop a new framework for the business of IT
•How to formalize policies and processes and put them into practice
•How to map the organization to meet the demands of global, 24x7 business
•How to define projects and ensure end user satisfaction and IT recognition

Day 2
•How to manage end user and management expectations
•How to engage stakeholders as accountable parties in critical decisions
•How to build executive management commitment
•How to manage critical vendor relationships
•How to make it all happen through consideration of multiple sourcing options

Who Should Attend

•Directors and managers of IT organizations or units
•IT and IS professionals
•Anyone who needs to realign IT with the business

Key Takeaway

Principles that can develop or enhance your own IT policies, processes, organization, and practices, thus creating a more effective IT business unit.

Feedback from previous Principals of Effective IT Management participants.

With mobility now essential to enterprises and organizations of all types everywhere, understanding the components, options, alternatives, and best practices that enable successful mobile implementations and operations is more important than ever. This session, which features some of the best-known and most-experienced analysts working the field today, will explore and debate key areas of mobility including wireless networking, mobile computing, operations management, and key recent developments in the field.

In 2012 IT organizations are five times more likely to cite user experience as a network priority over throughput. This trend is a direct result of the expanding distribution of network assets across internal and external infrastructures, the growing reliance on internet applications in the enterprise, and the increasingly diverse set of application connection and consumption contexts. Building a technology architecture to assure user experience for private and public cloud applications based upon a common policy and intelligence foundation is a top priority for network and IT management teams who seek to build a predictable user experience for all applications, anywhere they are delivered and consumed.

Advances in video technology, together with Moore’s Law, are driving video vendors toward positioning their products more as software than hardware. What does this evolution mean for enterprises that are seeing ever-increasing interest in video in multiple contexts—room systems, desktops, and mobile in particular? How is it affecting price/performance, interoperability, ease of deployment and use—and what are the implications for enterprises with large installed bases of legacy video systems that are more hardware-centric? This session will update you on the latest developments in video products, and will help you develop a plan for moving forward on video while protecting legacy investments.

Information Security remains the number-one concern of CIO’s when they consider moving workloads to the cloud. This session will focus on solving the problem customers face with securing their IT infrastructure as they adopt public cloud services. For cloud providers, we’ll also discuss enhancing the security profile of your cloud.

The last few years has seen a significant adoption of server and storage virtualization. The network, however, has remained static. The good news is that we are now seeing the first steps towards virtualizing the network and network services. The bad news is that there are a number of differing ideas as to what is meant by network virtualization. The panelists in this session will describe what they mean by network virtualization and identify the value that it provides to enterprise networks.

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.

The proliferation of “everything cloud” leaves plenty of room for new technologies to emerge, and in some cases even fosters the evolution of new approaches that stem from more established ones. One such example is the growing emergence of disaster recovery-as-a-service (or RaaS), a technology that is beginning to take flight as an evolutionary offshoot of Storage-as-a-Service. RaaS is emerging as a key business continuity component for organizations of all sizes. A critical challenge for Storage-as-aService is the time it takes to restore service. While data can be recovered from the cloud, the time it takes to do so can be lengthy. And there’s still the need for a platform to recover to. Redeployment and provisioning of new servers and infrastructure can take time when a crisis has occurred…. too much time. RaaS can be a critical piece in the disaster recovery puzzle, and this presentation outlines how organizations can take advantage of it as a reliable means of backing up, and an efficient means of recovery.

Cloud storage implies that a company loses control over their data in several ways (…or does it?)

Using 3rd party vendors for any part of your infrastructure involves tradeoffs in confidentiality, privacy, integrity, and availability. Learn and the facts and fiction surrounding the loss of control when using a cloud storage partner. Learn how you can take advantage of mechanisms like encryption, compression, data masking, and other tools that make cloud storage behave more like traditional on-premesis storage. We'll discuss how you can leverage some of the benefits of cloud storage, while mitigating the risk. Topics include data encryption, key management, data integrity, data consistency, and how cloud storage actually works.

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.

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.

This session will provide a brief overview of how IPv6 has been implemented in the InteropNet and how those concepts also apply to an enterprise network.

Telecom service providers come to the cloud market having already adopted IT management best practices and security standards to become trusted providers of traditional IT outsourcing services, such as colo and hosting. But it is unclear, in these early days of cloud deployment, whether enterprises will pay more for a standards-heavy, high-performance trusted cloud solution or whether they expect a new generation of cloud standards, aimed at delivering security and resiliency in the multi-tenant, dynamic, and non-geographic cloud realm, but at lower cost. This panel will examine the current state of standards in the cloud market, including the role of industry standards groups, and look at who is driving the standards process.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

Intensifying market pressures and growing frustration with legacy systems are driving business end-user and corporate executives to adopt a widening array of Cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. Rather than combat today’s “consumerization of IT” and “shadow IT” trends, smart IT professionals are working with their end-users and corporate executives to put policies and procedures in place to satisfy their changing needs. This workshop will provide insights into how leading IT organizations are helping their end-users and corporate executives better evaluate, select, deploy and maximize the value their SaaS applications. It will also identify a new generation of Cloud-based solutions which can help IT organizations manage these tasks and optimize their performance.

Intensifying market pressures and growing frustration with legacy systems are driving business end-user and corporate executives to adopt a widening array of Cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. Rather than combat today’s “consumerization of IT” and “shadow IT” trends, smart IT professionals are working with their end-users and corporate executives to put policies and procedures in place to satisfy their changing needs. This workshop will provide insights into how leading IT organizations are helping their end-users and corporate executives better evaluate, select, deploy and maximize the value their SaaS applications. It will also identify a new generation of Cloud-based solutions which can help IT organizations manage these tasks and optimize their performance.

The level of innovation in wireless and mobile has never been greater – especially considering the long histories of these co-dependent fields. But new developments appear at an amazing pace, and this session will look at some of the most interesting and important. From improved wireless performance to new applications and lower costs, a knowledge of key advances in wireless and mobile technologies can yield huge benefits.

For a practical demonstration of dealing with the BYOD challenge, the InteropNet team, with support from Xirrus and Cloudpath, has developed a simple "Opt-In" BYOD demonstration network that is available for attendees to see how the theory is implemented in a live environment. This session will take you behind the scenes of the demonstration.

Wireless is moving from a general overlay for generic access to a essential access medium. Learn some of the concepts being used in todays networked world.

For a practical demonstration of dealing with the BYOD challenge, the InteropNet team, with support from Xirrus and Cloudpath, has developed a simple "Opt-In" BYOD demonstration network that is available for attendees to see how the theory is implemented in a live environment. This session will take you behind the scenes of the demonstration.

Having a streamlined underlying BSS/OSS systems will be critical for CSPs for launching and profiting from innovative cloud services. Old legacy BSS/OSS systems will fall short of flexibility, scalability and control which cloud based business models demand. Operator's back office systems which encompass order capture, service delivery, rating, billing and service assurance need to be integrated, streamlined and adhere to best practice business processes for delivering on-demand Cloud based services. This will enable operators to reduce their Opex cost, reduce time to market of services, inject efficiency into their product management strategy and help them maximize their revenue potential from Cloud services. In this panel we will discuss how a nimble order to cash to care value chain is a pre-requisite for operators to create operational efficiency and achieve profitability.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

Among the key reasons businesses choose to pursue managed services are the need to consolidate multi-vendor relationships and solutions management, limited expertise in specific products and technologies, and reduction in their operational expenditure. Lines are blurring between traditional dedicated hosting and cloud computing services as customers increasingly want a consistent service level across both architectures, complete with comprehensive service level agreements (SLAs).This panel will discuss how Operators, System Integrators and Vendors can effectively use Cloud infrastructure to deliver managed services to their respective customers.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

The aggregation and leverage of large amounts of data might appear to be a goldmine- but before passing go, enterprises need to ask if they are going about it legally. The first part of this session will be a Big Data law “Crash Course.” We will review some of the basic legal and regulatory issues necessary for consideration in each step of the Big Data supply chain, including: privacy and information security concerns, the current discussion in Washington, and trends in the international community. The second part of the session will explore how Big Data technologies are forcing a reevaluation of the fundamental concepts of privacy. We will discuss the potential impact of Big Data on the enforcement and development of privacy laws and some of the specific legal issues that arose over the past year, including: constitutional issues, the definition of personally identifiable information (“PII”), the threat of de-anonymization and the White House’s Privacy "Bill of Rights."

Software-defined networking (SDN) is one of the most written about topics in IT because it holds the promise to fundamentally change how networking is done. There is some question, however, about whether or not there is any substance behind SDNs or are they largely a media event? In this two-part session, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) will describe both SDN and OpenFlow, including a discussion of the current status of the relevant standards and what changes you can expect to see over the next year. Jim Metzler will then present a detailed overview of how end users are approaching the deployment of SDN and he will also summarize the strategy of the leading SDN vendors. The biggest component of this session will be one or more end users describing why they implemented SDN, what they learned from their implementation and what their next steps are.

Break from 11:15 to 12:30

Relying on video communication as a tool for business-to-business communication has historically been extremely challenging, especially if you need more security and quality of service than the Internet. Collaborating with customers, partners and distributors using HD quality videoconferencing is now as simple as dialing an access number and passcode. In this session learn how you can now videoconference more people in your value chain in more locations around the world to improve collaboration, productivity and competitiveness across numerous global MPLS networks, manufacturers, and device types. Video is about to become as easy as making a telephone call.

With mobility now essential to enterprises and organizations of all types everywhere, understanding the components, options, alternatives, and best practices that enable successful mobile implementations and operations is more important than ever. This session, which features some of the best-known and most-experienced analysts working the field today, will explore and debate key areas of mobility including wireless networking, mobile computing, operations management, and key recent developments in the field.

This session will go over how InteropNet benefits from Dyn's Infrastructure as a Service DNS services, and how IaaS translates to better service for your customers too. 6connect will introduce their IPAM product integration with DynECT DNS.

Virtualization has clear benefits for enterprises along with widespread adoption. But what about small to medium businesses? Do those benefits apply? Should SMBs do it themselves or should they look to service providers to take over? How does virtualization relate to the cloud and should SMBs be going straight to the cloud? And if so, should it be hosted private cloud or a public cloud?

Services Enterprise IT Success in the Cloud Security must be the number one priority for any cloud provider and that's no different for Amazon Web Services. Stephen Schmidt, VP and Chief Information Security Officer for AWS, will share his insights into cloud security and how AWS meets the needs of today's IT security challenges. Stephen's background with the FBI and his work with AWS customers in the government and space exploration, research, and financial services organizations, will share an industry perspective that's unique and invaluable for today's IT decision makers.

For many, the most critical element in any mobile solution is the subscriber unit. The capabilities of handsets, tablets, notebooks, and a wide variety of specialized devices define much of how a given organization operates when mobile, and the implications for just about every aspect of IT, from apps to costs to support to security and much more, are enormous. This session will examine the options, variables, and key new developments in this vital space.

Information risk management and security is an ever changing and evolving concept and challenge. The threats that are posed to organizations and the risks they create are constantly changing and becoming more challenging. The solutions used to protect organizations against these threats and mitigate the risks they create are also changing and evolving. This panel discussion will look at the emerging trends in information risk management security from both a business and technological perspective.

By all accounts the era of Big Data is here and today’s challenge is for enterprises of all sizes to determine what opportunities exist as a result of this data explosion. There’s gold hidden in the massive mountains of data generated by their systems, their operations, their employees, their partners, and their customers. But what does this mean for today’s enterprise? How should they act on it – strategically and tactically? What are the opportunities and pitfalls for both Line of Business and IT executives?

This session will explore the opportunities that exist around Big Data as well as potential pitfalls for organizations as they begin to launch their own Information Optimization and Analytics projects. It will provide attendees with real-world examples of ways organizations are leveraging Big Data, and how to manage and analyze all forms of interaction and data – structured, semi-structured and unstructured.

The ability to extract real value from Big Data is the currency of business, but only if they are able to manage, understand and act on 100% of business relevant information. Attendees will hear how today’s leading companies are turning data into gold to drive revenues, close enterprise knowledge gaps and enhance their operations. Come learn about the new ROI – Return on Information.

Information risk management and security is an ever changing and evolving concept and challenge. The threats that are posed to organizations and the risks they create are constantly changing and becoming more challenging. The solutions used to protect organizations against these threats and mitigate the risks they create are also changing and evolving. This panel discussion will look at the emerging trends in information risk management security from both a business and technological perspective.

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.

Mobile users on cellular networks and wireless LANs (WLANs) often have severe performance issues. In this session, Eric Siegel of Gartner will first look at the actual performance of cellular networks and at the technical issues inhibiting both cellular and WLAN performance. He will then present design recommendations that are intended to improve the performance of cellular networks and WLANs through the appropriate use of WAN performance optimization and the implementation of key changes to the networks and to the applications.

Successful mobility strategies are as much about building a culture of mobility into enterprises (and enterprise IT) as they are about tools, techniques, and technologies. This workshop will focus on the business and operational considerations of mobility. We’ll begin with a review of key management concerns regarding mobility, and issues relating to managing a fundamentally distributed or otherwise mobile workforce. We’ll then explore the key policies and agreements required – security, acceptable use, bring your own device, expense management, and how these affect overall operations. We’ll next look at the solutions available today from an operations and management perspective, including network management systems, mobile device management, mobile policy management, mobile expense management, and mobile security. We’ll conclude with practical tips on making mobility work inside of a variety of enterprises across a representative range of missions.

Want to save your business money? Of course you do. What if we could show you a way to use the Cloud in and around your office, get your workforce mobile, make communication faster and easier, AND reduce OPEX? We can. Jason Silverglate will present a “how to” analysis of what Cloud technology can do for the modern office, of any size.

Jason Silverglate, CEO of Fortress ITX and its subsidiaries, has been redefining computer technologies and strategies since 1997. Leading a successful conglomerate of more than 50 knowledgeable IT professionals, Silverglate oversees trusted services such as managed hosting, private Cloud and IT integration. He’s an expert when it comes to using the Cloud to improve business efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Silverglate can show you how incorporating hosted PBX, hosted email, and even hosted desktop (virtual desktop infrastructure) methodologies can help optimize office efficiency AND save your enterprise money.

With mobility management one of the most important challenges facing the enterprise today, the options are wide ranging, and, dare we say it, confusing. Mobile Device Management (MDM)? Mobile Applications Management (MAM)? Mobile Expense Management (MEM)? Mobile Data Management (the other MDM) – and more? This session will make sense of all of the EMM landscape, helping you craft an effective solution with minimal overlap and maximum benefit.

Often the best way to design mobility strategies that work is to learn from the experiences of others. This panel provides exactly that – a look at what works (and what doesn’t) from those who have implemented mission-critical mobile solutions across a number of technology and application areas.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

The amount of video traffic running across your enterprise network is almost certainly growing. And you’re probably aware of this growth, but you may not be aware of its true scale, or of the effect it’s having on the performance of the underlying infrastructure. That’s because while some video traffic is enterprise-deployed and approved, some is also likely coming via Skype and other ad hoc applications. In this session, a leading expert on network performance will help you learn, first of all, how to determine the amount and sources of all video traffic on your network. Then he’ll show you how to accommodate and prioritize video traffic so that it doesn’t overwhelm other business-critical applications, and so that the video traffic that itself is business critical receives the treatment it requires.

Having a streamlined underlying BSS/OSS systems will be critical for CSPs for launching and profiting from innovative cloud services. Old legacy BSS/OSS systems will fall short of flexibility, scalability and control which cloud based business models demand. Operator's back office systems which encompass order capture, service delivery, rating, billing and service assurance need to be integrated, streamlined and adhere to best practice business processes for delivering on-demand Cloud based services. This will enable operators to reduce their Opex cost, reduce time to market of services, inject efficiency into their product management strategy and help them maximize their revenue potential from Cloud services. In this panel we will discuss how a nimble order to cash to care value chain is a pre-requisite for operators to create operational efficiency and achieve profitability.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

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.

Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD, is perhaps the greatest sea change in mobility since the rise of wireless networks beginning almost three decades ago. While improved operational economies and user satisfaction are the goals, the challenges inherent in implementing an effective BYOD strategy are many. This session will explore how to construct effective BYOD polices and maintain security as organizational information finds its way to user handsets and other non-enterprise-owned devices.

As with the emergence of any new technology, Cloud has brought more than its fair share of issues. First there is the human impact of cultural shifts, talent management, and organizational change. Secondly, the technology implications of security, operational process changes, and governance hurdles. Finally, there is the business side of economics, continuity, and alignment. Making all of this work is can be a daunting task, but there are many who have successfully navigated these waters and can share insights on key issues they’ve encountered and how they resolved them.

Cloud Computing has already radically impacted all aspects of IT. It could be compared to the switch from circuit- to packet-based networking, or from procedural to object-oriented programming, or from mainframes to client-server models. As with those shifts, some IT professionals and skill sets will thrive -- and others will become obsolete. Clouds rely on a new set of fundamentals: horizontal scaling, virtualization, multi-provider application hosting, advanced business and orchestration management, and more. In this session, we will cover the technologies that have and continue to emerge to deliver these solutions and the IT challenges that come along with this evolution of services. In addition, recent survey information from Current Analysis on cloud adoption trends, emerging technology concerns, and key market insights will be shared to provide perspective on the global cloud state and buying / adoption behaviors in the enterprise today.

Unlike almost every other area of IT, when it comes to security, no organization is ever really done. And, despite major advances in mobile security standards and products and services, the need for every greater vigilance – and knowledge – will be with us for some time. This session will review the current challenges and important new solutions that enable mobility to increase in value without compromising the security and integrity of the enterprise itself.

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.

There are many choices facing network managers when choosing tools and techniques for planning and operating today's networks. Some of the options include Best of Breed or Integrated Suite? NetFlow or Packet Monitoring? Local or SaaS? Proactive or Reactive? Internal or MSP? And the stakes could not be higher - networks are returning to prominence as a critical piece of the IT infrastructure, and the expectations for reliability and sustained performance are ratcheting upward. In this debate-style panel, Jim Frey of Enterprise Management Associates will drive a lively discussion amongst management technology leaders who will look at the pros, cons, and major decisions points when selecting management approaches and strategies.

With the explosion of mobile devices and applications in the enterprise and the challenges brought on by bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives, mobility is becoming a key responsibility within IT. The desire to honor employee preferences regarding mobile devices must be balanced with IT’s responsibilities to manage and secure corporate data and systems.

While the initial feeling was that adequate management could be extended through push email tools like Microsoft’s Exchange Active Sync or Lotus Notes Traveler, organizations quickly learned that they needed more comprehensive tools like those being offered by the mobile device management (MDM) vendors. Now with the rapid uptake on those solutions users are discovering the vast range of mobile threat vectors including applications, operating systems, over-the-air snooping, wireless denial of service, and careless user behavior. Those threats are multiplied if those devices are used on cellular networks, in-house Wi-Fi networks, and public Hot Spots.

This program will provide the groundwork for developing, implementing, and maintaining a best practices mobility plan and policy. The major elements involved in ensuring mobile security and management including MDM systems, internal app stores, and self-service portals will be discussed, along with an overall program for how these systems must be developed in line with the specific business goals of the organization.

Who Should Attend

Enterprise mobility managers or anyone involved in the development or maintenance of enterprise mobility policies for BYOD implementations.

Key Takeaways

• A comprehensive understanding of the tools and techniques used to manage a mobile environment including MDM systems, app stores, guest portals, and the rest.
• Key areas to watch in the selection of a mobile device management solution.
• An update on the latest developments in mobile security involving networks, devices, data and applications
• A checklist of the major issues to be addressed in a mobility policy and the range of options we typically see considered
• A template to help your organization develop and maintain an effective mobility plan and policy for both corporate liable and individually owned mobile devices.

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.

With the explosion of mobile devices and applications in the enterprise and the challenges brought on by bring your own device (BYOD) initiatives, mobility is becoming a key responsibility within IT. The desire to honor employee preferences regarding mobile devices must be balanced with IT’s responsibilities to manage and secure corporate data and systems.

While the initial feeling was that adequate management could be extended through push email tools like Microsoft’s Exchange Active Sync or Lotus Notes Traveler, organizations quickly learned that they needed more comprehensive tools like those being offered by the mobile device management (MDM) vendors. Now with the rapid uptake on those solutions users are discovering the vast range of mobile threat vectors including applications, operating systems, over-the-air snooping, wireless denial of service, and careless user behavior. Those threats are multiplied if those devices are used on cellular networks, in-house Wi-Fi networks, and public Hot Spots.

This program will provide the groundwork for developing, implementing, and maintaining a best practices mobility plan and policy. The major elements involved in ensuring mobile security and management including MDM systems, internal app stores, and self-service portals will be discussed, along with an overall program for how these systems must be developed in line with the specific business goals of the organization.

Who Should Attend

Enterprise mobility managers or anyone involved in the development or maintenance of enterprise mobility policies for BYOD implementations.

Key Takeaways

• A comprehensive understanding of the tools and techniques used to manage a mobile environment including MDM systems, app stores, guest portals, and the rest.
• Key areas to watch in the selection of a mobile device management solution.
• An update on the latest developments in mobile security involving networks, devices, data and applications
• A checklist of the major issues to be addressed in a mobility policy and the range of options we typically see considered
• A template to help your organization develop and maintain an effective mobility plan and policy for both corporate liable and individually owned mobile devices.

The New Generation of Cloud Applications

Cloud computing is no longer just about delivering more efficient IT in the enterprise, it has become the center of innovation in applications that move a business forward. The next generation of cloud-based solutions - for example Analytics, Mobile, DevOps, and Social Business - will be focused on deriving real business value from IT, with the cloud delivery model playing a major part in realizing that value.

Often the best way to design mobility strategies that work is to learn from the experiences of others. This panel provides exactly that – a look at what works (and what doesn’t) from those who have implemented mission-critical mobile solutions across a number of technology and application areas.

Social business systems have been around long enough for most enterprises to have, at minimum, experimented with them, while employees have likely developed a base of understanding about the potential uses for social networking in their personal and business lives. So what do we know about the real value of social to the enterprise—and how does this translate into an understanding of ROI for these products? Which social applications should be considered “table stakes” for any enterprise; which are particularly useful for different vertical industries or job categories; and which are more hype than real? In this session, you’ll get an understanding of which social capabilities are as necessary as basic voice and data services, which have some incremental value, and which are to be avoided as not worth the security or governance risk.

The advent of cloud computing, social media analysis, mobility and applications on demand is changing the role of the CIO in businesses of all sizes. The CIO has an unprecedented opportunity to leverage their expertise to partner with the "new power brokers" within their businesses (including a massive shift toward the "empowered CMO"). In this fast moving, provocative session Arthur Tisi, successful founder of several technology companies, former CIO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and current CIO of the Foodie and Financial Juggernaut Fairway Market , will offer a unique perspective on the new role of the CIO. Tisi will be joined by UBM Editorial VP Eric Lundquist to analyze and engage with the audience in delving into this critical business role.

The advent of cloud computing, mobility and applications on demand is changing the role of the CIO in businesses of all sizes. In this fast moving, provocative session Arthur Tisi (former CIO of the Metropolitan Museum of New York), current CIO of Fairway Market will offer a unique perspective on the new role of the CIO. Tisi will be joined by UBM Editorial VP Eric Lundquist to analyze and engage with the audience in delving into this critical business role.

Throughout the workshop, we’ll be discussing how building private clouds requires a combination of infrastructure, virtualization, optimization, automation, management, orchestration, self-service portals, and service catalogs. In this closing panel, we'll discuss our panelists’ experiences with various building blocks, the options IT has today to transform their data center operations into IT as a service, and recommended best practices for successfully building private clouds.

The debate over cloud services vs. apps just scratches the surface of what the enterprise needs to consider when building successful mobile IT solutions. This session will explore the strategies, tools, alternatives and key elements that solution developers within every organization need to know about this vital element in mobile success.

Throughout the workshop, we’ll be discussing how building private clouds requires a combination of infrastructure, virtualization, optimization, automation, management, orchestration, self-service portals, and service catalogs. In this closing panel, we'll discuss our panelists’ experiences with various building blocks, the options IT has today to transform their data center operations into IT as a service, and recommended best practices for successfully building private clouds.

What does 'carrier cloud' look like? How are telecom cloud providers marrying their network services and data center-based cloud compute, storage, platform and software services? What comprehensive cloud management and application migration strategies are needed to create and operate a carrier cloud and do existing tools and technologies come up to scratch? How can operators abstract and virtualize their networks so that they are as elastic as IT cloud automation platforms and what benefits will this deliver to them? What role will PaaS and SaaS play in the carrier cloud? This panel will address these questions and more in exploring the evolution of the carrier cloud.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

Cloud Computing is the orchestration and formation of many distinct components into a single optimized systems environment. One of the significant hurdles that remains is managing across previously isolated technology disciplines and orchestrating these resources in a single cohesive model. Managing across these boundaries is not trivial, nor is the demand of real-time compute spin-up in this complex environment yet tools have emerged to address this challenge. In this session, you’ll hear from industry experts and vendors alike on the benefits and challenges of managing these diverse environments.

Those who deploy applications and databases on cloud platforms find that some practices work, while others do not. It’s understandable that some trial and error will occur, but at this point we should begin to understand the emerging best practices that will insure successful cloud platform deployments.

During this panel our cloud platform experts will discuss the emerging best practices in cloud platform deployment, leveraging real world expertise rather than marketing hype. We’ll share approaches that get deployment right the first time, as well as which approaches to avoid.

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

Throughout the workshop, we’ll be discussing how building private clouds requires a combination of infrastructure, virtualization, optimization, automation, management, orchestration, self-service portals, and service catalogs. In this closing panel, we'll discuss our panelists’ experiences with various building blocks, the options IT has today to transform their data center operations into IT as a service, and recommended best practices for successfully building private clouds.

Telecom service providers come to the cloud market having already adopted IT management best practices and security standards to become trusted providers of traditional IT outsourcing services, such as colo and hosting. But it is unclear, in these early days of cloud deployment, whether enterprises will pay more for a standards-heavy, high-performance trusted cloud solution or whether they expect a new generation of cloud standards, aimed at delivering security and resiliency in the multi-tenant, dynamic, and non-geographic cloud realm, but at lower cost. This panel will examine the current state of standards in the cloud market, including the role of industry standards groups, and look at who is driving the standards process.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

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

The early days of cloud computing for most enterprises have been about building a model for deploying individual applications and services into platform and infrastructure services. However, the growing issue for those that begin to scale out their usage of cloud isn't each application, but the interconnectedness of those applications with each other. Find out how the management of application systems will force change in both cloud applications and cloud platforms.

So, what will be the future of cloud computing. Will it be big and bigger data? Cloud-based platforms that are expandable to a scale as yet unknown? In this panel we’ll address those questions and more. We’ll look well beyond the hype at the true future of cloud computing. What you can expect. When you can expect it. Come here to learn where to place your bets.

In this talk Mike Veilleux challenges the
conventional wisdom that engagement rates across industries are the best indicators for sending. Instead,

Veilleux believes that each company has a unique business model that affects overall engagement. By identifying these various business models, Veilleux is accurately able to predict deliverability rates.

The way in which a firm engages its customers and partners is changing. New delivery channels are emerging, creating pressure on IT to deliver applications faster and in more ways than before. This session will review the trends of SoLoMo applications and how Cloud Centric technologies can reduce complexity of multi-channel delivery and speed up delivery. Not only will we show you how to reduce costs, but how application delivery can occur faster and smarter than before

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

Unlike almost every other area of IT, when it comes to security, no organization is ever really done. And, despite major advances in mobile security standards and products and services, the need for every greater vigilance – and knowledge – will be with us for some time. This session will review the current challenges and important new solutions that enable mobility to increase in value without compromising the security and integrity of the enterprise itself.

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 speakers in this session are end users who will discuss how their campus LANs are changing in general and what they are doing to support BYOD in particular.

Big Data is complex, moves fast and doesn’t fit typical database architectures. With the advent of Big Data, monitoring for network performance, security and compliance isn’t getting easier. Learn how advanced network monitoring switch technology provides both visibility and control of your network, even in your Big Data environment.

There is a natural link between cloud-based services and data-capable mobile devices. Applications for those devices can be located in the cloud and the data that drives those applications most certainly will be. But what role will telecom cloud providers play in the mobile realm in competition with companies such as Apple and Google? This panel will explore the possibilities, including service delivery platforms for mobile enterprise apps, the M2M market and applying cloud-based IT techniques, as well as virtualization, to storage, applications, collaboration and more for the mobile world.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

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

Killer applications for cloud computing have emerged, and we’re gathering value from them right now. However, where should we place our best applications in the future? What will be the next wave of killer cloud computing applications?

In this panel our experts will provide their take on the emerging uses for cloud computing platforms, including what will be hot for years to come. Come to this panel with your own ideas and concepts, and see if you agree with the experts’ take on the future of cloud computing.

There is a natural link between cloud-based services and data-capable mobile devices. Applications for those devices can be located in the cloud and the data that drives those applications most certainly will be. But what role will telecom cloud providers play in the mobile realm in competition with companies such as Apple and Google? This panel will explore the possibilities, including service delivery platforms for mobile enterprise apps, the M2M market and applying cloud-based IT techniques, as well as virtualization, to storage, applications, collaboration and more for the mobile world.

The road to cloud services is a complex one, and goes in different directions depending on the focus and intent of the cloud provider. This workshop will provide a step-by-step strategy for moving into the cloud, to include managing vendor engagements, understanding how licensing agreements change in the cloud and wholesale space, and spelling out both the layers of business practices and the technology required. The workshop will explore the differences between pure-play cloud strategies and other approaches, and will examine how cloud services fit into the overall managed services portfolio of a service provider.

For many, the most critical element in any mobile solution is the subscriber unit. The capabilities of handsets, tablets, notebooks, and a wide variety of specialized devices define much of how a given organization operates when mobile, and the implications for just about every aspect of IT, from apps to costs to support to security and much more, are enormous. This session will examine the options, variables, and key new developments in this vital space.

As with the emergence of any new technology, Cloud has brought more than its fair share of issues. First there is the human impact of cultural shifts, talent management, and organizational change. Secondly, the technology implications of security, operational process changes, and governance hurdles. Finally, there is the business side of economics, continuity, and alignment. Making all of this work is can be a daunting task, but there are many who have successfully navigated these waters and can share insights on key issues they’ve encountered and how they resolved them.

With quickly-deployed public cloud services only a credit card swipe away -- and your internal IT viewed as difficult and out of touch -- the specter of “Shadow IT” is very real for most IT shops. If “IT as a Service” seems like a pipe dream, think again. In this session, learn what innovations are occurring in the cloud market and the IT best practices that will help put you on the path ITaaS path.