Event Schedule

Hear industry visionaries discuss the growth and future of IT.

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Track: Storage

By adopting server virtualization we’ve reduced the number of physical servers in the data center but the proliferation of separate storage, data, management and VMotion networks has made the back of our server racks look like an explosion in a spaghetti factory. Now that 10Gigabit Ethernet is widely available several solutions have arisen to consolidate network and storage I/O onto a smaller number of higher bandwidth connections. With consolidated networking users can stop playing the game of one cable, two cable, orange cable, blue cable.

Track: Information Security and Risk Management

Vulnerability management has become a key component to information infrastructure security, however, it needs to evolve quickly to stay ahead of the hacking community and become more useful to IT Leadership. In order to keep up with the ever-growing threat landscape of technical vulnerabilities it is important to understand where you are vulnerable from both an application and network perspective. Traditional vulnerability management capabilities, techniques, and technologies may no longer be sufficient and can produce mixed results due to both the volume of vulnerabilities and credibility of the results. This session will focus on the current leading practices and the next generation of tools and techniques organizations can deploy for effective and realistic vulnerability management including:

* Prioritization of exploitable vulnerabilities

* Vulnerability enumeration techniques

* Remediation management concepts

* Compliance reporting capabilities

Track: Enterprise 2.0

To date, technology analysts have quite properly focused on the social and business aspects of social software. And yet, social software tools (including collaboration suites, pure-play blog / wiki / social-networking products, and revamped portal products from major vendors) differ quite substantially in maturity, approach, and support. This session will share customer research from noted evaluation firm CMS Watch on leading social software technologies, and provide a framework for customers to evaluate the marketplace based on their own needs.

Track: Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is part of a more fundamental shift in IT: from a monopoly to a democracy. Once, computers were expensive, and the people who built applications for them were specialists. Today, however, computing is nearly free and everyone's a technologist. IT is shifting from a monopoly to a free market, much as other legal monopolies -- the phone company, the railroads -- were eventually forced to give up control. This presentation will take a step back to look at the big picture of ubiquitous, cheap computing and what it means for IT.

Track: Application Delivery 2.0

The last few years has seen a great growth in the deployment of virtualized servers and storage. We are now seeing the deployment of software based application delivery appliances such as WAN optimization controllers (WOCs) and application delivery controllers (ADCs). These devices hold the promise of fundamentally changing application delivery. The members of this PowerPoint-free session will discuss the pros and cons of these appliances. What kind of performance improvements will you experience with a virtualized appliance? How will these devices be managed? Do they work with all hypervisors? Are they integrated with other branch office or data center functionality? Are they certified with any major software or storage vendors? How are they priced vs. a traditional appliance?

Track: Virtualization

Feeling bewildered by a slew of new acronyms, technologies and concepts describing virtualization? Need a high-level overview of what the different types of virtualization mean to you and your business? Do you want to get your arms around server virtualization, hypervisors, OS virtualization, hardware assists, virtual desktop architectures, application streaming and isolation, and where all the various virtualization vendors fit? This is the session for you.

Track: Wireless and Mobility

We’re kicking off this year’s Wireless and Mobility track with a detailed look at the often confusing and complex world of wireless technologies. These key elements form the basis of modern wireless communications, and this session is designed to provide enterprise decision-makers and practitioners with all they need to know to pick the best solutions for requirements at hand, as well as to detail the still-evolving wireless landscape so as to best address upcoming user and application demands efficiently and cost-effectively.

Track: Storage

Data storage is just one element in the application delivery ecosystem, but it turns out that it is often the critical performance bottleneck. A number of new technologies have come out in the recent years to optimize storage performance. This session reviews several of these innovations and explains how some performance-optimization technologies can be easily integrated into the existing storage infrastructure. Topics include spindle aggregation, various storage acceleration devices, application-level QoS techniques, and caching or hot-spotting with solid state disk. Specific attention will be given to accelerating network file systems, MS Exchange, and SQL databases.

Track: Video Conferencing

Choosing a video conferencing system is daunting. You face a sea of choices. Solutions range from multi-million dollar telepresence suites to desktop software available for pocket change. Your supporting infrastructure can be ad hoc, centralized within your enterprise, integrated with voice or unified communications solutions, or outsourced to a managed services provider. Which technologies will best suit your needs? This session presents a decision tree approach for sifting through vendor offerings and hype so you can determine the right size, bandwidth, features and infrastructure to meet your visual communications needs.

Track: Networking

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 to enable it to support cloud computing. For example, a new LAN access layer has emerged that is comprised of the vSwitches embedded within the hypervisor software. However, these vSwitches typically have poor management scalability and limited traffic visibility. Today’s typical WAN can not effectively support the dynamic movement of VMs nor cloud bursting. It also is not experiencing the same type of price reductions as are computing and storage 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.

Track: Information Security and Risk Management

An effective Information Risk Management and Security strategy allows an organization to define how it will operate in order to achieve its business goals and requirements while still effectively protecting its information infrastructure and data assets. If developed properly strategy provides a roadmap for success that includes the definition of the capabilities, goals, timelines, functions, requirements, and metrics required to develop and implement an effective set of capabilities. It also assists an organization to answer the vital question of how much is enough? This session will focus on the key concepts and capabilities that should be considered when developing an Information Risk Management and Security strategy. Case studies of strategy development and implementations will be utilized throughout the session as well as discussions of current industry leading concepts and practices.

Track: Cloud Computing

As we try to use clouds for increasingly mainstream, production-grade applications, performance and reliability become a greater concern. In this session, we'll review existing studies on cloud performance, and look at what and how to measure cloud performance.

Track: Virtualization

Moving to a virtual infrastructure brings both significant benefits and challenges in terms of data protection and availability. A well managed virtual environment should include leveraging virtualization and newly available tools to improve the way you implement Backup, Disaster Recovery, High Availability and possibly Fault Tolerance. Learn how various virtualization capabilities fit on the continuum of protection and availability and hear best practices involving various technologies including image backup, VM and storage snapshots, replication, HA clustering, and fault.

Track: Wireless and Mobility

Given the rapid rate of change in wireless and mobile technologies, services, products, and applications, it’s no surprise that the experts will disagree as to what the single most important item on your mobility to-do list should be. This session, nonetheless, will provide just that – a compilation of expert opinions as to the single best idea, with subsequent debate to enable you to pick what needs to be at the top of your list. Join us for a fast-paced session that will bring the entire range of wireless and mobile opportunities into focus.

Track: VoIP and Unified Communications

Enterprises are universally considering and installing features of Unified Communications. The forces of Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Mobility are driving change into every aspect of enterprise communication. Learn how Unified Communications will become ubiquitously deployed as these technologies sweep through the workplace. ShoreTel’s Founder and CTO, Ed Basart describes the future of enterprise communications.

Track: Cloud Computing

Businesses are always looking for ways to maximize the latest applications on the market. This session will introduce the world’s first matchmaking engine connecting specific businesses with relevant applications, an innovative approach to helping customers find the SaaS apps that fit their needs.

Track: Cloud Computing

The Associated Press is the world’s largest syndicator of news content. Period. For them, the cloud offers the opportunity to further operationalize this asset, focus on the business challenges on hand and less on the infrastructure challenges. Join us for a case study in how they have used the Dallas data marketplace and other key building blocks of the Windows Azure Platform to create a new business opportunity. They will discuss their challenges, the approach, and lessons to date.

Track: Information Security and Risk Management

Learn how SIEM and real-time, in memory, analytics combine to capture, correlate and respond to network attacks and insider abuse. See automated responses to network attacks, policy violations, inappropriate web browsing and USB device usage. Hear how mid-sized enterprises use SIEM to meet regulatory compliance initiatives and gain network control.

Track: Networking

Trends such as the adoption of virtualization are fundamentally changing how IT organizations need to architect their data center LAN. For example, the introduction of server virtualization and blade servers means that the traditional three tier data center LAN is expanding to where it now has as many as five layers. These extra layers can introduce unacceptable cost, complexity and delay. While all of the LAN switching vendors are aware of the problem, they have different approaches to solving it. In this session, Mike Fratto, Editor, Network Computing and Jim Metzler of Ashton, Metzler & Associates will identify the emerging approaches to architecting a data center LAN and will discuss the pros and cons of each.

Track: Cloud Computing

IT professionals are split on cloud security: half of them see it as a way to get stronger, more reliable computing that's secured by experts and far from the risk of in-house fraud; others see it as a terrifying loss of control that may violate privacy and compliance regulations. Either way, clouds call many security assumptions into question. This debate-format session will give proponents and detractors their chance to convince the audience.

Track: Wireless and Mobility

A key direction for enterprise mobility management is to extend the edge of the organization’s network all the way to the mobile device - handsets and other mobile subscriber units can now be managed just like the rest of the network. But there are many possible directions, choices, and options to be considered in this rapidly-evolving field, and this session will examine key alternatives in what is becoming a vital concern – and opportunity - for organizations on the go.

Track: Information Security and Risk Management

Social networks simultaneously offer huge business benefits and unheard of security risks. How can enterprises effectively use social networks while not putting their security and data at risk? This session will detail the significant security and privacy risks that social networks create, and will also provides detailed guidance on ways organizations and individuals can use social networks in a safe and secure manner.

Track: Storage

The concept of thin provisioning is not new, but the state of the art has advanced, adding awareness between the operating system and storage device for enhanced efficiency. This session introduces the value proposition and concept of thin provisioning, covers the technology of the major thin storage vendors (3PAR, BlueArc, Compellent, Dell, EMC, HDS, HP, IBM, NetApp, Pillar) and operating system integration layers (Symantec, VMware, and T10), and presents novel approaches from Data Robotics, Apple, and cloud storage systems. We will present the pros and cons of these various approaches in the context of enterprise storage management.

Track: VoIP and Unified Communications

Real-time traffic (voice and video) demand that the network provide low latency, low packet loss and low jitter. Today’s dynamic networks are constantly changing, and the distributed nature of network configuration often lead to errors in design or implementation that can cause quality problems for voice and video conferencing applications. A new breed of testing methodologies and tools is required to test or monitor networks and to isolate problems. This session will explore the need for these tools, will categorize the tools and will list vendors that provide the different kinds of solutions needed to manage today’s complex converged networks. You’ll also learn how to use these tools to troubleshoot when problems do arise.

Track: Virtualization

Articles often describe the value that virtualization technologies can bring to IT but what are the realities of implementing server and desktop virtualization? Do they really offer the benefits that vendors are touting? What are the "gotchas" to avoid? Hear about the experiences of those who have implemented various virtualization solutions. Find out what strategies worked and which ones didn't. Listen to accounts of life in the trenches, and learn next steps to consider in your own implementations of virtual infrastructure.

Track: Cloud Computing

Amazon Web Services are the de facto model for public cloud platforms: a core offering of virtual machines, surrounded by a range of storage, messaging, and mamnagement service. For many companies, this will be their first taste of a public cloud. In this session, we'll walk through deploying your first application atop AWS -- from evaluating your workload profile, to selecting the right services, to migrating and configuring the application itself.

Track: Networking

Having analyzed the emerging approaches to architecting a data center LAN it is now time to drill down into which technologies you should incorporate into your new data center LAN. In this PowerPoint free session, Mike Fratto and Jim Metzler will question LAN switching vendors about a number of topics including the pros and cons of FCoE vs. iSCSI; the viability of separating the LAN switch’s control and the data planes; the pros and cons of virtual switching and multi-chassis LAGs; the need for services such as QoS or security; as well as the alignment of each application VM with its own virtual NIC and virtual switch port.

Track: VoIP and Unified Communications

It was just one year ago that Avaya secured the purchase of Nortel Enterprise Solutions by winning a bankruptcy auction with a bid of almost $1 billion. With that acquisition behind it, has Avaya managed to keep the large installed base of Nortel customers on its side—or are the poachers prevailing? That’s just one of the many issues that will determine how the enterprise communications market shakes out over the coming year. In this session, you’ll learn who the market leaders are in terms of stations shipped and revenues, and an understanding of the strengths of their product lines, market positioning and corporate leadership.

Track: Wireless and Mobility

Join us for a rare opportunity to hear from managers and users putting mobility into practice across a wide array of applications. We’ll examine what works, what doesn’t, and what key requirements have been identified for the next generation of applications. We’ll also explore cost issues and how to make the best decisions regarding the marriage of applications and mobility.

Track: Storage

The mega vendor storage world is filled with the inefficiencies and inequities of bloated, archaic legacy storage companies unable to tap the SMB market. This market has long been disregarded, leaving a huge segment of users to make do with stripped down enterprise products, or a personal storage device left to under deliver. As digital data continues to grow, and data retention regulations and compliance filter down to SMBs, the benefit of data storage is fully felt at all levels.

Track: Information Security and Risk Management

Social Engineering (SE) driven by the science of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) has become one of the dominant threats in security landscape. SE is used by many professions who must make decisions about people, rapidly and accurately. More importantly, it’s used to help you say yes. Even when you don’t want too! The information taught in this session is seldom available outside of the social science field because of its many powerful uses. This session will help you understand the SE threat, how you can tell if you’re under an SE attack, what you can do about these attacks and how to monitor and mitigate this threat.