Track: Data Center

 Building a private cloud does not require building a whole new data center. The quickest path to the cloud is to reclaim and repurpose your current IT infrastructure into a new private cloud likely within your current data center facility. Making the move from the static data center requires more than just infrastructure; it also requires new processes and automation. This session will help data center managers: 1) Learn how automation aides in the migration to and management of private clouds; 2) Understand the benefits of deploying a private cloud; and 3) Review best practices for enabling self-service to a private cloud.

Track: Cloud Computing

 Infrastructure-as-a-Service computing uses the virtual machine as its fundamental unit: a single computer, rented by the hour. It's the ultimate in flexibility, but it burdens you with all of that machine's maintenance and scaling. On the other hand, Platform-as-a-Service promises virtually limitless scalability and freedom from low-level operations, at a price: custom APIs, limited choice, and even rewriting your code. This session will compare the two fundamental models of cloud computing, arming you to choose the right one for different situations.

Track: Information Security and Risk Management

 Hacking is a profitable business, and like any business, to achieve scalability, it must become organized and various groups must become specialized. At its core, industrialized hacking can be understood by looking at three areas including the roles and responsibilities of the individuals involved, the optimization of compromised resources, and the automation of the attack vectors. This presentation will explore research that has been done around the industrialization of hacking. It will include an analysis of processes and techniques such as automated attacks and business logic attacks that are being used by modern attackers as well as countermeasures to thwart them.

Track: Networking

 Experts agree that the IPv4 address space will be depleted in about two years. In this session, John Curran, the president and chief executive officer of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), will identify the challenges that IPv4 depletion presents to networks and the Internet community as a whole, and how organizations can prepare for these challenges.  The session will discuss the considerations for IPv6 adoption, as well as how to get involved in the community-driven public policy process that dictates how the remaining IPv4 address space is allocated.

Track: Wireless and Mobility

 Anyone deploying mobile applications of any form is faced with a broad range of key decisions: Local apps or Web services or a hybrid? What tools should be used for current (and future) app development, deployment, and management? And how can mobility managers pick the best apps from a sea of hundreds of thousands? This session will provide practical advice on this key element of a successful mobility strategy.

Track: Video Conferencing

 Video conferencing is arguably the toughest application your enterprise network must support.  It gobbles bandwidth while demanding priority treatment (QoS). Designing the right network solution to support enterprise video conferencing is key to its acceptance as a business tool.  This session will explore technical aspects of designing, testing, and managing an enterprise network to support high quality video conferencing and telepresence -- and dive deeply into security, LAN QoS, and WAN QoS issues.

Track: Virtualization

 As virtualization implementation progress, the key to realizing the full potential of virtual infrastructures is though advanced management, optimization and automation. This session is a primer on advanced management capabilities such as dynamic workload balancing, high availability, disaster recovery, capacity and performance management, and automated policy-based workflows. It will discuss the value of implementing advanced management features and describe the landscape of solution vendors, from start-ups to long-time industry leaders. 

Track: Information Security and Risk Management

Having trouble telling the difference between a Web App Firewall and an Application Aware Firewall? between a UTM and an XTM? How deep is this deep packet inspection versus that one? How many network security appliances do I need anyhow? Which "products" should really be features? With so much marketing and vendor FUD, how can anyone tell what they really need?  How do virtualization, clouds, and APTs affect my ability to do Network Security - or at least change requirement priorities? Together, we will map all legacy network security appliances to a common model and the OSI stack and discuss key changes in the threat and technology landscapes - cutting through marketing and history. Participants will leave better informed and more equipped to save time, money, and hassle going forward.

Track: Green IT

Green IT is on the rise to cut costs, mitigate risks and even grow revenues. Despite the challenging economy of 2010, Forrester finds that 45% of IT organizations globally are implementing or creating a green IT strategy, with an additional 34% considering it. So why should you consider green IT if you haven’t already? Should you start inside the data center or outside? What should you improve if green IT is already underway? And how do you prioritize green IT projects and secure budget? To answer these questions, this session will define green IT, track its trajectory, and review best practices from leading organizations who have successfully green their IT to deliver financial results.

Track: Networking

Given the combination of the economic malaise and the sensationalism that surrounds topics such as cloud computing and server virtualization, it is possible to surmise that nothing of significance is happening in the networking space.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Venture capitalists and others have been funding significant investments in a wide range of networking technologies and the results of those investments are beginning to hit the market.  The panelists in this fast-paced, PowerPoint-free session will discuss some of the most promising emerging networking technologies.  Attend this session to get an early look at what could be some significant networking breakthroughs.

Track: Wireless and Mobility

 While convergence of many forms remains a key topic in enterprise IT, we’re seeing just the opposite in handsets and mobile operating systems: continuing and even accelerating diversity. This has led many to ask a number of key questions with far-reaching impacts on both IT and the bottom line: Which platforms survive? What will these look like going forward? And how can the enterprise successfully plan the evolution of mobility given these shifting sands? This session will feature a debate of the key issues and opportunities surrounding these vital concerns.

Track: Cloud Computing

GCE, a leader in cloud-computing technology for enterprises, implemented a government agency-wide financial system overhaul within the Department of Labor in early 2010. Through this implementation, GCE has built a best-practice case for adoption, transition and implementation of cloud-based systems that can be applied to other enterprise-class systems. The mission-critical implementations include sensitive financial information management tools such as automated workflows, world-class reporting tools to provide immediate visibility to data, elimination of hardware, software and hosting management, flexibility and scalability as the user's mission changes, security and a quick ramp-up to launch, while staying on budget. Ultimately, the solution will enable an organization to focus on its core mission.

Track: Virtualization

 Virtualization management is the key to successfully moving beyond basic server consolidation to an agile virtual infrastructure to a private cloud.  A well managed virtual environment must include performance and capacity management, automation of virtual operations, troubleshooting and root cause analysis through the virtual and physical infrastructure, lifecycle management,  and more. Learn how layering the right management capabilities onto your virtual environment will improve your IT operations and build the foundation for a private cloud.  

Track: Application Delivery 2.0

The great growth over the last few years in the use of Web applications combined with the recent interest in cloud computing has caused IT organizations to realize that simple server load balancers can’t keep up with the emerging demands.  What is needed is an application delivery controller (ADC).  In addition to balancing traffic, an ADC offloads computationally intensive tasks off of a server farm.  However, the ADCs that are currently available in the market differ dramatically in terms of their underlying architectures and the functions that they provide.  In this fast-paced, PowerPoint-free session, leading ADC vendors will be asked questions that serve to identify the similarities and differences between their products.

Track: Cloud Computing

 Once an enterprise has in-house computing in a private cloud, it's time to link to public clouds for elasticity, disaster recovery, and cost efficiency. But connecting public and private systems isn't straightforward: workloads may not be portable, and policies between on-premise and on-demand platforms have to be enforced. This session will examine the integration of public cloud platforms with in-house private clouds, and the creation of self-regulating "hybrid" cloud architectures.

Track: Wireless and Mobility

 While it’s seemingly impossible to produce multi-year plans for mobile IT deployments, that’s the number-one task facing many enterprise IT and network managers today. How can one pick the right combination of devices, networks, services, and applications? This session will offer advice on developing a strategy for success given a broad range of variables and greater strategic pressure than ever to set the right course.

Track: Data Center

 Virtualization is causing the convergence of server, storage, and network platforms. At the same time, fewer CAPEX dollars coupled with rising energy costs is promoting data center managers to incorporate energy efficient and highly utilized IT equipment in the data center. This session will help data center managers understand virtualization’s role in convergence and plan for a more efficient and highly utilized server, storage and network environment.

Track: Information Security and Risk Management

 Security budgets have recently come under intense scrutiny and often are being cut or left the same as previous years even in a climate where security threats and attacks are on the rise.  In these conditions where do you invest your available budget?  Why isn’t the technology you have invested previously solving your security problems?  How do you use the technologies and capabilities that you already have more effectively?  How do you convince your management and leadership that security is still relevant and important?  What should you be thinking about next?  This panel discussion will answer these questions and more by providing knowledge and insights from professionals who are successfully overcoming these challenges every day.

Track: Video Conferencing

Just last year Polycom and Tandberg were the top two players providing primarily room-based video conferencing equipment running H.323 to enterprises, with a number of additional players in the market working hard to take away some of their market share.  Suddenly we have Cisco as the largest video vendor and HP announcing a strong new line of products with their partner Vidyo.  Desktop video conferencing is on the rise.  Unified Communications (UC) architectures are becoming the core of the video infrastructure involving Microsoft, IBM and Avaya in the fray, and using SIP as the standard for video signaling.  How will all this settle out?  If I am making a video conferencing decision now that I want to sustain my company for the foreseeable future, which way should I go?

In this panel,  the video conferencing vendors will discuss these key transitions and how they see the market shaping up as we move forward.  Join us to see if they agree or disagree, and learn which vendor’s vision best suits the requirements of your company.

Track: Virtualization

 Virtualization impacts every major compliance standard and requires fundamental changes to security practices.  What should this mean to you? This session will discuss what gaps are introduced in the move from physical to virtual where compliance is concerned, and prescribe specific steps to ensure compliance for production deployments. Regulatory areas discussed will include FISMA, DIACAP, PCI, HIPAA and SOX/GLBA. The session will also discuss how to build a framework for securing virtual  data centers and private clouds, and how to take physical security constructs like Zones and propagate them to the virtual infrastructure to enable consistent security across the entire data center. You will learn how various hypervisor security architectures coupled with VM Introspection and automation can deliver dynamic, granular insights into security.                            

Track: Green IT

The data center is a common starting point for most green IT initiatives. Data centers not only consume a tremendous amount of energy, but are riddled with IT inefficiencies. Take, for example, the average server environment where 30% are of servers are “dead” — consuming energy, but performing no useful work. And data center managers have ample opportunity to improve efficiencies across other IT systems, like storage and networks, and facilities equipment, like power distribution and cooling. This session will help data center managers develop a comprehensive green data center framework across their server, storage, network and facilities assets to deliver financial and environmental savings

Track: VoIP and Unified Communications

 Multivendor interoperability is a must if UC is going to take off; few if any enterprises will get all of their UC infrastructure and applications from a single vendor. But interoperability has received lip service, at best, from the vendors in this space. That could be changing, with the formation of the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF), which aims to create more standardized implementations and compliance testing. Can the UCIF reach this goal? This session will help you understand how much has really been accomplished, and how much farther there is to go.

Track: Wireless and Mobility

 While major wireless security concerns have long since left the front page, security is the one area in IT (and especially in mobile IT) where “done” is never achieved. New challenges and outright threats appear on a continual weekly basis, and it’s vital to keep up with the ever-changing security landscape. Our objective for this session is to look at the latest in mobile security threats, and how new solutions are enabling mobile users to go about their business without compromise to sensitive corporate assets.

Track: Information Security and Risk Management

 There is continued pressure in today’s corporate environment to do more with less, to reduce costs and to become more agile in order to meet rapidly changing business demands in a difficult global economy. Outsourcing IT Security services is often senior management’s response to these challenging times, so the question is not if it will happen, but rather when and how it will happen, if it hasn’t already.  However, has anything really changed, though?  What is the true impact of the decision to outsource IT Security services?  When IT Security is outsourced, what are the hidden challenges?  This session will be presented from the perspective an enterprise security manager who has first-hand knowledge of how outsourcing certain IT Security services can help meet the resource and costs pressures of an organization without compromising its IT Security posture.

Track: Cloud Computing

As cloud computing becomes more prevalent and moves from an option to an edict, it is important to understand the framework that makes it reliable and scalable.  This session will discuss the building blocks of the cloud architecture and the functional innovation it brings:

* The "Assumed Failure" model of deployment

* Mechanics of self-healing and autoscaling for clouds and applications

* Application high availability vs VM high availability;

* Interoperability (and what it means for your deployment) 

* Why standards are necessary

Track: Application Delivery 2.0

 Most IT organizations are taking IT resources such as servers, applications and storage out of branch offices and placing them in centralized data centers.  This raises some critical questions:  How can IT organizations overcome the impediments to the broad deployment of virtual desktops?  Should the next generation branch office be serverless?  What type of device(s) needs to still be in the branch office and how is it managed?  What techniques can be used to overcome the performance issues?  The speakers on this panel will answer those questions and will present alternative designs for your next generation branch office.