IT Conference Overview

Tuesday-Thursday, May 19-21

Attend the Interop Conference for a comprehensive, integrated view of technologies that will give your business a competitive edge. Learn how the recent surge of IT innovation can help you cut costs, get closer to your customers and increase revenue.

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Tuesday, May 19
10:15 am–11:15 am	Conference Sessions Application Performance Management Management used to be focused primarily on the availability of network devices, such as switches and routers. During the last few years, the focus of management has evolved to where it typically now includes the performance of both networks and applications. In this session, the panelists will describe the technologies and processes that IT organizations should implement to become more efficient at managing the infrastructure, while simultaneously becoming better at managing the performance of key applications. Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton, Metzler & Associates Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm. Key Considerations in Business Resiliency Business Resiliency is the maturation and amalgamation of the individual processes of crisis management, incident response, business continuance and disaster recovery into one succinct set of processes and capabilities that work collectively instead of independently. This combination allows organizations to have minimal disruption in the event of a business-impacting incident that affects the entire organization instead of one that involves specific information infrastructure areas. When evaluating these capabilities, it is important to understand that they only are as effective as the proactive planning and considerations that go into their development. Too often, planning accounts for only the most obvious considerations and does not incorporate crucial and essential considerations that have the most impact. This session will discuss the key elements of business resiliency and the considerations which should be made when developing or maturing this capability. Speaker - John Pironti, Chief Information Risk Strategist, CompuCom John P. Pironti is the Chief Information Risk Strategist for CompuCom. He has designed and implemented enterprise wide electronic business solutions, information security programs, and threat and vulnerability management solutions for key customers in a range of industries, including financial services, government, hospitality, aerospace and information technology on a global scale. Mr. Pironti has a number of industry certifications including Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Information Systems Security Architecture Professional and (ISSAP) and a Information Systems Security Management Professional (ISSMP). He is also a published author and writer, and a frequent speaker on electronic business and security topics at domestic and international industry conferences. Before joining CompuCom, Mr. Pironti was a Principal Enterprise Solutions Architect and Principal Security Consultant for Unisys, Inc. Prior to that he has held technical and management positions at AT&T and Genuity Inc. Mr. Pironti has a B.S. degree in imaging systems management from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Next-Generation Architectures for Communications The traditional enterprise communications architecture is evolving as IP networks and software functionality take center stage. Communications may become a data center-based application, or may have elements that are distributed throughout private and public networks and implemented via mashups. Also, the core function of communications is likely to change from voice call control to presence management. This session will help you understand the transition that is under way, and how you should plan for it. Virtualization Technology Primer Feeling bewildered by the slew of acronyms, technologies and concepts describing virtualization? Need a high-level overview of what virtualization means 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, virtualization cloud services, bursting to the cloud—and more? If so, this is the session for you. Key Skill Sets for the Data Center Manager of the Future Data center managers be warned—the business's insatiable demand for IT services, coupled with out-of-space and power concerns, rising energy prices and increased outsourcing, will require skills beyond technical versatility. Forecasting, project management and vendor management will all become necessary skills for future data center managers. To better manage their own career and develop up-and-coming staff, this session will discuss the evolving role of the data center manager, drivers for change, as well identify key skill sets necessary for success into the future. Moderator - Doug Washburn, Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations , Forrester Research Doug serves IT Infrastructure & Operations professionals, primarily focusing on green IT, green business, and IT leadership skills. His research helps IT executives successfully approach green IT, determine strategy, and then move from green IT awareness to action. Previously at Forrester, Doug was the global council manager and senior advisor for the Forrester Leadership Boards IT Infrastructure & Operations Council, a best practice community for senior IT executives in $1 billion-plus organizations. In this role, Doug regularly advised clients on Green IT strategy and practices. Additionally, Doug was also an advisor on the Forrester Leadership Boards Enterprise Architecture Council. Prior to Forrester, Doug was a VP of strategy and business development for Red Oxygen, a wireless communications startup, and living and working in Australia and France. In addition, Doug co-created CU Networks, a computer networking and servicing startup serving the students of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Doug holds a B.S. in finance from University of Colorado at Boulder and was awarded the Undergraduate Certificate in Entrepreneurial Excellence. Storage Virtualization II - Effective Use of Virtualization This session builds on Storage Virtualization I from Interop Las Vegas 08. Attendees should already have a basic understanding of this subject. Storage Virtualization Part II covers practical issues of block virtualization in order to make most effective use of it. This session describes the implementation step-by-step and aspects of availability, performance and capacity improvements. Other topics this session covers includes: the role of storage virtualization within policy-based management, and its integration in the SNIA Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S). Learning Objectives: 1. Understand a detailed example of the implementation of storage virtualization 2. Understand the management techniques necessary to effectively control virtualized storage 3. Increase awareness of the impact of virtualized storage on other aspects of computation (especially virtual servers) and networking Speaker - Rob Peglar, Vice President, Technology, Xiotech Corporation Rob Peglar is Vice President, Technology for Xiotech Corporation. A 31-year industry veteran and published author, he leads the shaping of strategic vision, emerging technologies, defining future offering portfolios including business and technology requirements, product planning and industry/customer liaison. He is a member of the SNIA Board of Directors, serves as Chair of the SNIA Tutorials, as a Board member of the Green Storage Initiative, and as Secretary/Treasurer of the Blade Systems Alliance. He has extensive experience in storage virtualization, the architecture of large heterogeneous SANs, replication and archiving strategy, disaster avoidance and compliance, information risk management, distributed cluster storage architectures and is a sought-after speaker and panelist at leading storage and networking-related seminars and conferences worldwide. Prior to joining Xiotech in August 2000, Mr. Peglar held key technology specialist and engineering management positions over a nine-year period at StorageTek and at their networking subsidiary, Network Systems Corporation. Prior to StorageTek, he held engineering development and product management positions at Control Data Corporation and its supercomputer division, ETA Systems. Mr. Peglar holds the B.S. degree in Computer Science from Washington University, St. Louis Missouri, and performed graduate work at Washington University's Sever Institute of Engineering. His research background includes I/O performance analysis, queuing theory, parallel systems architecture and OS design, storage networking protocols, clustering algorithms and virtual systems optimization. Herding Cats: Managing SaaS sprawl SaaS makes it easy to turn up a new application, often for little or no money up front. That ease of deployment is also a curse: It's not uncommon for companies to have dozens of SaaS relationships. The management overhead can quickly undermine any cost savings or operational advantages that SaaS offers. This panel will look at how rein in out-of-control SaaS deployments.
11:30 am–12:30 pm	Conference Sessions A Comparison of WAN Optimization Controllers The vast majority of workers currently reside in branch offices and access applications over relatively low-speed and high-latency WAN. This use of the WAN causes many applications to perform badly. To mitigate the impact of the WAN on application performance, many vendors have developed a solution referred to as a WAN Optimization Controller (WOC). In this PowerPoint-free session, leading WOC vendors will be asked questions to identify the similarities and differences between their products. Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton, Metzler & Associates Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm. Anatomy of Attack - Detecting and Responding to Fraudulent Activity Fraud-related trends will be covered, as well as ways to address those trends including: real-time and forensic analysis, pattern investigation and advanced correlation. Advanced use cases will be explored illustrating perspectives ranging from the nefarious fraudster to the security analyst. Each fraud concept will be juxtaposed against how security information and event management (SIEM) solutions can be leveraged to detect and mitigate the fraud. Social Software Tools: A Critical Evaluation To date, technology analysts have quite properly focused on the social and business aspects of Enterprise 2.0 technologies. And yet, Enterprise 2.0 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 Enterprise 2.0 technologies, and provide a framework for customers to evaluate the marketplace based on their own needs. Unlock the Potential of Virtualization - Management is the Key As virtualization implementation progress, the key to realizing the full potential of virtual infrastructures is though advanced management 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. The Rise of the Green Enterprise: What is IT's Role? Leading organizations are reevaluating their value chain through a green lens to mitigate risk, reduce costs and increase revenues to ultimately deliver shareholder value. To determine IT's role in the "Green Enterprise," IT leadership needs to get up to speed on what the Green Enterprise is and its motivations. This session will introduce the "Green Enterprise" concept, discuss the heightened expectations of IT and offer practical steps for IT leadership to enable more green business behaviors; not just greener IT. Moderator - Doug Washburn, Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations , Forrester Research Doug serves IT Infrastructure & Operations professionals, primarily focusing on green IT, green business, and IT leadership skills. His research helps IT executives successfully approach green IT, determine strategy, and then move from green IT awareness to action. Previously at Forrester, Doug was the global council manager and senior advisor for the Forrester Leadership Boards IT Infrastructure & Operations Council, a best practice community for senior IT executives in $1 billion-plus organizations. In this role, Doug regularly advised clients on Green IT strategy and practices. Additionally, Doug was also an advisor on the Forrester Leadership Boards Enterprise Architecture Council. Prior to Forrester, Doug was a VP of strategy and business development for Red Oxygen, a wireless communications startup, and living and working in Australia and France. In addition, Doug co-created CU Networks, a computer networking and servicing startup serving the students of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Doug holds a B.S. in finance from University of Colorado at Boulder and was awarded the Undergraduate Certificate in Entrepreneurial Excellence. Information Compliance: Classification, Archiving and eDiscovery Compliance and eDiscovery are two of the biggest challenges facing IT today. Information continues to grow exponentially - and with it - the need to comply with industry and government regulations and prepare for eDiscovery while keeping costs down. This session will discuss the situation in which many companies today find themselves—trying to reconcile records management, compliance and governance requirements and manage to these requirements with tools that are available today. In particular, it will look at classification, archiving and retention policy management to proactively address compliance, and as tools to treat eDiscovery requests as a repeatable business processes. Speaker - Sheila Childs, Director of Marketing, EMC Sheila Childs Director, Software Product Marketing EMC Information Management Software Group Sheila Childs is a Director of Marketing in EMC?s Content Management Software Group, a worldwide leader in the development and delivery of enterprise content management and archiving solutions. Sheila has held technical and management positions in product strategy, product development, product management and customer support/services. She has delivered value-focused storage management software for backup/recovery, HSM, remote device access, device and media management, SAN management and most recently, Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). Sheila has been involved with the Storage Networking Industry Association as a participant in technical working groups, on various committees and as a Board member. She co-chaired the Interoperability Committee from 1999-2001, which has brought successful interoperability demos to a number of Storage Networking World conferences, and initiated the SNIA-Conformance Test Program (SNIA-CTP). She has been active in many initiatives including the startup of the Technology Center and the SNIA Storage Management Initiative. She has been a member of the Board of Directors for four years; her elected positions include a year as Vice Chair and two years as Chairman. She chaired the SNIA Data Management Forum in 2005. Clients Still Matter: The Case for Software Plus Service There's a new term in the SaaS dictionary: Software plus Service. Companies like Microsoft want to leverage their desktop dominance to marry the convenience of desktops with the ubiquity of on-demand services. Run-anywhere applications like Adobe AIR, as well as remote desktop technology, may mean your next SaaS application is a software/service hybrid. This panel of vendors discusses why Software plus Service is getting a closer look. MBX Conference Sessions Advanced Wireless and Mobile Technologies Wireless is a notoriously difficult space for engineers - caught between the unforgiving laws of physics and the economic requirements inherent in designing, building and manufacturing products. And yet, talented researchers and developers continue to push throughput, range and reliability, all the while lowering costs and power requirements. This session will provide an update on the latest development in wireless, including gigabit wireless LANs, orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA—the basis of most 4G technologies) and advanced antennas. If you want to know what's next in wireless, and what it will mean to you, this is the place. Mobile Platforms and Application Delivery Thick client? Thin client? Custom or off-the-shelf applications? Backup? Managing integrity, connectivity and security? These are only a few of the key questions we'll explore in this session. Given the variable connectivity inherent in wireless an ever-present challenge, the debate over how best to provision application services to a broad variety of mobile platforms is certain to be intense—and informative.
2:45 pm–3:45 pm	Conference Sessions CTO Roundtable Today's environment is characterized by an explosive growth in the development of new technologies. Some of these technologies will gain broad marketplace acceptance, while many others will not. Companies that invest in emerging technologies early in their development cycle typically gain a competitive advantage if these technologies become mainstream technologies. In this session, the chief technical officers (CTOs) of industry-leading companies will present their insight into which technologies will cross the chasm, and which ones will not. Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton, Metzler & Associates Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm. Security By Compliance, Information Risk Management's Greatest Challenge When most organizations think about information protection, compliance is the top issue today. This new level of consciousness has become a great benefit to information security professionals, as well as their greatest nightmare. The leadership of many organizations are now falling into the trap of "security by compliance"—which has created a false sense of security for them. They believe that if they meet their legal and regulatory compliance requirements, they have fulfilled their requirements for information risk management and protection. This panel will discuss the challenge of taking advantage of the benefits created by new compliance requirements, while also overcoming the challenge of this new operating procedure. Moderator - John Pironti, Chief Information Risk Strategist, CompuCom John P. Pironti is the Chief Information Risk Strategist for CompuCom. He has designed and implemented enterprise wide electronic business solutions, information security programs, and threat and vulnerability management solutions for key customers in a range of industries, including financial services, government, hospitality, aerospace and information technology on a global scale. Mr. Pironti has a number of industry certifications including Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Information Systems Security Architecture Professional and (ISSAP) and a Information Systems Security Management Professional (ISSMP). He is also a published author and writer, and a frequent speaker on electronic business and security topics at domestic and international industry conferences. Before joining CompuCom, Mr. Pironti was a Principal Enterprise Solutions Architect and Principal Security Consultant for Unisys, Inc. Prior to that he has held technical and management positions at AT&T and Genuity Inc. Mr. Pironti has a B.S. degree in imaging systems management from the Rochester Institute of Technology. The New Competitive Landscape for Unified Communications: Microsoft vs. Cisco vs. IBM vs. ??? The traditional private branch exchange (PBX) players are struggling to keep up with the large software and networking companies that have encroached on the enterprise market. Meanwhile, these new entrants are battling among themselves for dominance. This session will review the status of the legacy and new competitors, and will handicap their chances for success—with the goal of helping you understand where your investments should go. Virtualization - Life in the Trenches Articles often describe the value that virtualization technologies can bring to IT but what is it really like to implement server virtualization? What are the "gotchas" to avoid? Does desktop virtualization really work? Does it really offer the benefits that the vendors are touting? Hear about the experiences of those who have implemented various virtualization solutions. Find out what strategies worked and which ones didn't. Listen to accounts of life in the trenches, and learn what to consider for your next steps in your own implementations of virtual infrastructure. Forecasting: How to Determine What Your Next-Generation Data Center Requires There is a lot of buzz—and uncertainty—around the next-generation data center. What will it look like? When will it arrive? Will it even exist? Data center managers should take matters into their own hands by forecasting their future requirements for growth, reliability, flexibility and resiliency. Empowered with this information, data center managers can then make the next generation data center conform to their needs, as opposed to the other way around. This session will identify best practices to accurately forecast future data center requirements that data center managers should employ to effectively plan for the next-generation data center. Moderator - Doug Washburn, Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations , Forrester Research Doug serves IT Infrastructure & Operations professionals, primarily focusing on green IT, green business, and IT leadership skills. His research helps IT executives successfully approach green IT, determine strategy, and then move from green IT awareness to action. Previously at Forrester, Doug was the global council manager and senior advisor for the Forrester Leadership Boards IT Infrastructure & Operations Council, a best practice community for senior IT executives in $1 billion-plus organizations. In this role, Doug regularly advised clients on Green IT strategy and practices. Additionally, Doug was also an advisor on the Forrester Leadership Boards Enterprise Architecture Council. Prior to Forrester, Doug was a VP of strategy and business development for Red Oxygen, a wireless communications startup, and living and working in Australia and France. In addition, Doug co-created CU Networks, a computer networking and servicing startup serving the students of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Doug holds a B.S. in finance from University of Colorado at Boulder and was awarded the Undergraduate Certificate in Entrepreneurial Excellence. Speaker - Jim Smith, CTO, Digital Realty Trust Jim Smith is the Chief Technology Officer at Digital Realty Trust where he oversees datacenter development, the company's efficiency and green strategy, and power procurement and energy management. In the past three years, Mr. Smith and the Digital Realty Trust team have delivered more than 75 MW of UPS capacity on over 40 datacenter projects in North America and Europe. This portfolio includes the industry's first LEED Gold certified datacenter. Mr. Smith was recently named one of the top 25 CTO's of 2008 by InfoWorld Magazine and holds a Jim a BSc in Chemistry from Fort Lewis College and an MBA from the London Business School. Innovations in Storage Networking This is an exciting time in the field of Storage and Storage Networking. The advances in disk technologies with the move to integrate Solid State Disks with Hard Disk Drives are being brought to RAID controllers. The blending of storage, server and network Virtualization brings greater flexibility and asset utilization for customers and their IT infrastructure. The increasing performance potential in the storage network with advances in PCI Express, InfiniBand, IP SANS and the Fibre Channel over Ethernet initiatives continue to push the envelope of innovation. The concept of a Unified Data Center fabric promise reductions in cost and increases in performance for the future. A panel of storage and storage networking vendors will be on hand to answer questions and present the merits of their offerings, how they are approaching innovation and what the future holds. Honeymoon and Divorce: Changing SaaS Providers Switching software is hard enough to do when you run it in-house. But when you're moving from one SaaS provider to another, you face new challenges. You may not own your data; you may miss features you didn't know you were using; and custom code build for one SaaS platform may need rewriting on another. This panel of end-users who've made the jump shares lessons learned from SaaS migration. MBX Conference Sessions Going Mobile, Going Green With both increasing energy costs and greater demand for mobile computing and communications power, it's never been more important to examine the environmental impacts of mobile IT. Fortunately, advances in basic chip technologies, system architecture, engineering design, wireless protocols and power management are helping to limit demand for power (with the added bonus of longer run times between charges), while advances in battery technologies and innovations like supercapacitors and energy harvesting are yielding greater supply. This session will examine these capabilities in detail, and help you create a checklist to make sure your mobile technologies deliver the most performance with the least energy possible. Enterprise Mobility: The Choices Now Just as wireless is a broad set of technologies, each with its own mission and capabilities—any complete enterprise mobility strategy will include a potentially broad combination of wireless networks, mobile devices, software and applications, and management strategies and tools. Determining the optimal mix in any given case, however, can be daunting. This session will present the options, and explore potential solutions by way of examples and case studies of what works—and what doesn't.
4:00 pm–5:00 pm	Conference Sessions The Impact of IT Virtualization on Applications and Networks Virtualization is not new. However, what is new and evolving is the great interest in deploying server, storage and desktop virtualization. While each of these forms of virtualization can provide significant business value, each have the potential to significantly complicate the task of ensuring acceptable application performance. In this session, vendors from different areas of IT will identify network technologies, designs and best practices that enable IT organizations to enjoy the benefits of virtualization without enduring the potential pitfalls. Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton, Metzler & Associates Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm. Navigating Unchartered Waters: Best Practices for Managing a Governance, Risk and Compliance Architecture Across the Enterprise Organizations are challenged with governance, risk and compliance (GRC) hurdles that require a new strategy. Beyond Sarbanes-Oxley, organizations are weary of increased regulatory actions, corporate litigation, demands of corporate social responsibility, as well as stakeholder pressure. Ensuring compliance is a daunting task. In today's fiercely competitive and risky business climate, Fortune 1000 companies can no longer tackle GRC challenges as single entities. A sustainable GRC architecture facilitates the mega-processes of enterprise governance, risk and compliance. Attendees will be empowered to manage the lifecycle of corporate and IT policies; consolidate business intelligence across divisions; and achieve effective governance throughout the organization. Unified Communications Meets Enterprise 2.0 - Social Computing Love Fest or Battle Royale? Adoption of Unified Communications is on the rise, with the promise of more integration between users, business applications and the communication systems that support them. But IT and business managers have also had their eye on Enterprise 2.0 applications that some would argue are trying to achieve the same objectives. Are the UC and E2 agendas coming together or are they destined to duke it out for their share of the social enterprise? Controlling Virtual Server Sprawl It used to take months to provision a server; now it takes minutes. This provides IT with greater agility to respond to new requests, but has also created a new problem called virtual server sprawl. "Need another server? Sure, here you go!" - as quick as that. However, virtual server sprawl eats up resources - such as the Central Processing Unit (CPU), Memory and especially storage resources. Tools and techniques for avoiding and managing server sprawl will be discussed in this session. Green IT Outside Of the Data Center: PCs, Office Peripherals and Beyond While the data center often receives much of the Green IT spotlight, tremendous value is being left on the table by overlooking PCs and office peripherals. In fact, The Climate Group estimates that PCs and related peripherals consume close to three times the amount of energy and related CO2 emissions as the data center. This does include the green value from collaboration tools such as video conferencing, virtual meeting and work-from-home technologies. To help IT professionals expand their scope of Green IT, this session will introduce greening strategies beyond the data center. Moderator - Doug Washburn, Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations , Forrester Research Doug serves IT Infrastructure & Operations professionals, primarily focusing on green IT, green business, and IT leadership skills. His research helps IT executives successfully approach green IT, determine strategy, and then move from green IT awareness to action. Previously at Forrester, Doug was the global council manager and senior advisor for the Forrester Leadership Boards IT Infrastructure & Operations Council, a best practice community for senior IT executives in $1 billion-plus organizations. In this role, Doug regularly advised clients on Green IT strategy and practices. Additionally, Doug was also an advisor on the Forrester Leadership Boards Enterprise Architecture Council. Prior to Forrester, Doug was a VP of strategy and business development for Red Oxygen, a wireless communications startup, and living and working in Australia and France. In addition, Doug co-created CU Networks, a computer networking and servicing startup serving the students of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Doug holds a B.S. in finance from University of Colorado at Boulder and was awarded the Undergraduate Certificate in Entrepreneurial Excellence. Speaker - Greg Kovich, Director of Education Practice, Alcatel Lucent Greg Kovich brings 20 years of experience in information technology to his position as Senior Account Director at Alcatel-Lucent. In this role, Mr. Kovich serves as a business development specialist for the higher education and K-12 market in North America, working closely with education customers to more closely align Alcatel-Lucent's product portfolio to their needs. Prior to the merger of Alcatel and Lucent Technologies, Mr. Kovich was the Product Marketing Manager in Alcatel's Enterprise Solutions division. Greg Kovich holds a bachelor of arts degree in accounting from Indiana University. "Green" Storage The next few years will bring widespread awareness of the environment's impact—especially energy costs—associated with data storage. Already several regulations and initiatives—for example, restriction of hazardous substances (ROHS), waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and Energy Star—affect manufacturers of storage components or computers. There are also some innovative storage technologies especially targeted towards energy conservation including a massive array of idle disks (MAID), along with the well-known alternatives of removable storage like tape and optical. Several vendors have also begun to offer data on power use, energy consumption and cooling loads in response to competitive pressures from other vendors and customers. Some vendors and consultants are offering energy modeling as part of their total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis, either for competitive reasons or as part of their professional services portfolio. This presentation will quickly review basic engineering topics relevant to understanding "Green," including stuff you may have successfully avoided, such as environmental chemistry; thermodynamics; energy vs. power; and computational and storage density, as well as the resulting energy and cooling issues. Conceptual models sufficient to understand or even develop energy budgets will be taught. All of this will converge on a basic model for TCO that includes energy modeling. This session has been brought to you by the SNIA Green Storage Initiative. Speaker - SW Worth, Senior Standards Program Manager, Microsoft PaaS, SaaS, and More: A Taxonomy of On-Demand Applications Hosted applications vary from the specific to the adaptable. At one end of the spectrum are websites with one purpose; at the other, open platforms that let you build your own applications. Navigating the landscape of on-demand applications can be a challenge -- should you choose one comprehensive application suite, or best-of-breed portals? Do you need off-the-shelf functionality, or limitless flexibility? This session presents a taxonomy of on-demand applications so you can choose what works for your business. MBX Conference Sessions Mobile Browsers - Taking the Desktop Everywhere We used to call them "microbrowsers"—but no more. The Web functionality built into (or available on) today's handhelds is nothing short of astonishing, with many equaling the desktop experience. In fact, today's microbrowsers can serve as the basis for enterprise applications just as they do in the office. Join us as we compare the capabilities of key players in this increasingly-critical element of mobile computing. Unified Network Management - Mobility Takes the Lead Network management is reaching new levels of visibility within the enterprise—evolving from simple configuration and monitoring to a strategic tool essential to cost-effective business operations. Adding mobility to the management mix, however, introduces new challenges, such as mobile device management, for network planners and operations staff alike. Despite the potential complexity, getting the right mix of management capability is the key to minimizing operational expense and maximizing user productivity. This session will examine the latest directions in this essential component of IT—wired and wireless.
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Wednesday, May 20
10:15 am–11:15 am	Conference Sessions How Networks Can Assist Application Delivery Historically, the way networks once assisted applications was by providing sufficient bandwidth. Recently, vendors have started to integrate functionality such as secure sockets layer (SSL) processing and WAN optimization into network devices. Now we are beginning to see a movement to provide application programming interfaces (APIs) directly to the switches' and routers' operating systems, and to also run portions of an application directly on switches and routers. The panelists at this session will discuss the spectrum of functionality that is being integrated into network devices, as well as the pros and cons of doing so. Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton, Metzler & Associates Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm. Virtual Reality: Understanding the Security and Compliance Implications of Server Virtualization Server virtualization is hot! Whether your executives think green or simply want to save some green, everyone is deploying virtualizationm - the benefits are undeniable. As we embrace virtualization, we must strategically approach security and compliance from the start. Virtualization introduces new attack surfaces and a swath of new availability risks. This brave new world also impacts how we approach compliance, governance and risk management. Corman will explore best practices and real world successes in assuring virtualization benefits. Speaker - Josh Corman, Principal Security Strategist, IBM/ISS Joshua Corman serves as Principal Security Strategist for IBM Internet Security Systems. With over a decade in security and IT, Corman designs strategic and technical vision of security solutions for emerging issues. He has spoken at leading industry events such as RSA, Interop, InfoSec, LinuxWorld, and IT Security World. His Evolving Threat campaign encourages strategic approaches for dynamic threats. VoIP Security We're getting more reports of vulnerabilities being found in IP telephony products, but are any of these being exploited yet? What parts of an IP telephony system are most likely to be targeted, and how likely is it that attackers will succeed in damaging your system? This session will focus on the state of the art in voice over internet protocol (VoIP)/IP telephony/Unified Communications security. Tuning, Tweaking and Troubleshooting Your Virtual Infrastructure Virtualization is great, but the business application is king! Getting your virtual infrastructure to perform optimally is essential to meeting application service levels. This requires performance monitoring and management; capacity management and chargeback; and troubleshooting tools that successfully navigate the complexities of the entire virtual infrastructure including servers, storage and networking. This session introduces some of the ways IT can address application performance and capacity management across the virtual infrastructure. Technologies that Data Center Managers Can't Live Without The business demands reliable, flexible and resilient IT services. Data center managers rely on a combination of technologies - from blade servers, thermal modeling and intelligent protocol data units (PDU), to data center monitoring, automation and capacity planning tools - to meet these expectations. So what technologies are essential to managing your data center? This interactive session will reveal hardware, software and facilities technologies that data center managers can't live without. Moderator - Doug Washburn, Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations , Forrester Research Doug serves IT Infrastructure & Operations professionals, primarily focusing on green IT, green business, and IT leadership skills. His research helps IT executives successfully approach green IT, determine strategy, and then move from green IT awareness to action. Previously at Forrester, Doug was the global council manager and senior advisor for the Forrester Leadership Boards IT Infrastructure & Operations Council, a best practice community for senior IT executives in $1 billion-plus organizations. In this role, Doug regularly advised clients on Green IT strategy and practices. Additionally, Doug was also an advisor on the Forrester Leadership Boards Enterprise Architecture Council. Prior to Forrester, Doug was a VP of strategy and business development for Red Oxygen, a wireless communications startup, and living and working in Australia and France. In addition, Doug co-created CU Networks, a computer networking and servicing startup serving the students of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Doug holds a B.S. in finance from University of Colorado at Boulder and was awarded the Undergraduate Certificate in Entrepreneurial Excellence. A Crash Course in Data Replication Replicating data over a WAN sounds pretty straight-forward, but it turns out that there are literally dozens of different approaches, each with it's own pros and cons. Which approach is the best? Well, that depends on a wide variety of factors! This class is a fast-paced crash course in the various ways in which data can be replicated, and the pros and cons of each major approach. We trace the data path from applications to disk drives and examine all of the points along the way wherein replication logic can be inserted. We look at host based replication (application, database, file system, volume level, and hybrids), SAN replication (disk arrays, virtualization appliances, caching appliances, and storage switches), and backup system replication (block level incremental backup, CDP, and de-duplication). This class is not only the fastest way to understand replication technology it also serves as a foundation for understanding the latest storage virtualization techniques. Speaker - Jacob Farmer, CTO, Cambridge Computer Services Lots to Love, Less to Use: How Enterprises Can Embrace the Cloud While on-demand promises pay-as-you-go economics, built-in reliability, and a reduction in operational costs, the reality is that while there's lots to love about clouds, using them means rewriting many legacy applications. And many companies are unlikely to take that step. So how can enterprises embrace cloud platforms for the mission-critical apps they rely on? This panel of cloud software companies look at how to embrace the cloud without rewriting the business. MBX Conference Sessions Beyond Convergence: Unified Mobile Communications First there was fixed/mobile convergence, getting the cellular handset on the PBX. Then came mobile/mobile convergence, with handoffs between cellular and Wi-Fi. The next step in the evolution of mobility is unified mobile communications, provisioning all of the voice and data services available in the office to mobile users. With systems implementing this capability now becoming available, mobile Unified Communications (UC) is a key direction that will become a key tool for enterprise IT and telecom professionals. Building Mobile Applications - Platforms and Strategies This is a session for software developers who need a quick but informative overview of the key application-development alternatives for mobile devices. We'll examine the operating systems and development tools, and help you develop strategies for implementing today's - and tomorrow's - information-intensive enterprise applications. We'll also include a few practical examples and reserve time for your questions on development alternatives.
11:30 am–12:30 pm	Conference Sessions What's Wrong with the WAN Firewall? The traditional wide-area network (WAN) firewall makes two flawed assumptions. One assumption is that the information contained in the first packet in a connection is sufficient to identify the application. The second assumption is that the transmission control protocol (TCP) and user datagram protocol (UDP) well-known port numbers are always used as intended. These are just two of the issues that suggest that the traditional WAN firewall cannot effectively support the current environment. In this session, the panelists will describe the limitations of the traditional WAN firewall, and identify what functionality firewalls need to implement to overcome these limitations. Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton, Metzler & Associates Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm. The Hows and Whys of Intrusion Detection Event Correlation Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) have improved over time, but they nevertheless miss attacks and also produce false alarms. Correlating the output of multiple IDSs and devices can compensate for this. This presentation explains how and why this should be done. The manner in which data are correlated is a critical consideration, however. This presentation will explain and critique the major approaches to event correlation, such as statistical correlation, Baysian correlation, alert fusion and rule-based event correlation. The advantages and limitations associated with each type of event correlation method will be explained. Finally, this presentation takes a look at intrusion detection analysis is likely to take in the future. Speaker - Gene Schultz, CTO/CSO, HighTower Technologies Next Generation Search: Social Bookmarking and Tagging Social bookmarking installations often go from good to great to overwhelming. Although social bookmarking offers a rich potential for discovery and connecting it requires analysis and understanding of what is hidden in the mass of shared contributions. This session will show how to manage and make sense out of this flood of information. Conflict Avoidance with Application Virtualization What is the first thing that happens when you roll out a new application to a group of desktops? The phone rings off the hook with users complaining that a previous application is no longer working. Are help desk calls about application conflicts getting you down? With recent reductions in support staff and budget, do you need a better way to handle user problems and avoid costly "deskside visits?" Come hear how application virtualization and streaming technologies address inter-application conflicts, greatly reducing help desk calls and onsite support visits and improving operational efficiencies. Should You Own Your Next Data Center? When your current data center facility has reached its capacity, will you maintain ownership—or turn the reigns over to someone else? How will you make this decision? From collocation to cloud computing, it is no longer necessary for IT shops to own and operate data center facilities to offer critical data center services. This session will evaluate the various forms of data center ownership to help data center managers determine their ownership strategy into the future. Data De-Duplication Deduplication technology has changed the economics of storage. With the massive amount of backup data increasing, deduplication allows for an efficient way of storing data. In this session, we'll differentiate de-duplication from other storage techniques. We'll also examine the different approaches to deduplication, including in-line vs. post-process de-duplication systems and central processing unit (CPU) vs. disk-spindle centric systems. Further, we'll discuss the state of the industry and its importance to the overall storage networking puzzle specifically, and what problems de-duplication can and cannot solve. Speaker - Viet Phan, Senior Course Developer, DataDomain Understanding and Implementing the Windows Mobile Ecosystem With a familial resemblance to the Windows OS, Windows Mobile has evolved to a position of prominence in the mobile platform space. And with continual improvements—including new mobile device management capabilities - and residence on a broad range of handhelds, Windows Mobile is always on the short list in enterprises of all types. Learn how to build applications and structure IT solutions for Windows Mobile in this session. Clouds Aren't Just Computers: Why Network Effects Matter More than Economies of Scale Contrary to popular belief -- and the advice of many analysts -- clouds aren't important because of cost. In fact, for many companies they may be more expensive than in-house operations. But their value is tremendous: Clouds offer the ability to connect into global services, social networks, and value-added software quickly and easily. This session looks at why, ultimately, it will be network effects rather than cost savings that make us adopt on-demand services and ubiquitous computing. MBX Conference Sessions The Road to 4G Wireless While debate over the exact definition of 4G wireless continues to rage, it's safe to say that all-IP, broadband, mobile, wide-area wireless systems with multi-megabit throughput are now on the way. In this session, we'll debate the technologies and capabilities of the two key 4G technologies (Mobile WiMAX and LTE), and also discuss how advanced 3G technologies (EV-DO Rev A and HSPA/HSPA+) will lead the transition to a future where wireless can literally do everything we expect of wire.
2:00 pm–3:00 pm	Conference Sessions What SOA and Web 2.0 Means to the Network In the past couple of years, service-oriented architecture (SOA) and web services have been overhyped. Currently, Web 2.0 is beginning to suffer the same fate. Because of the hype, it is easy to dismiss these application development architectures as irrelevant. Both of these architectures are only in the early stages of influencing how applications are developed and applications build using either architecture are likely to run poorly and be difficult to manage. The panelists at this session will detail the management and performance issues associated with SOA and Web 2.0, and give their insight into what you can do to avoid them Moderator - Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton, Metzler & Associates Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm. Network Access Control - Is It Ready For Prime Time? Network access control (NAC) has been offered as the "Swiss Army knife" of IT security solutions. It promises to provide authentication, policy enforcement, identity and access management, ongoing security for the life of a connection, seamless usage in any NAC-enabled network, in addition to many other capabilities. If NAC is the answer, then what are the right questions to ask? This session will provide a realistic perspective on what NAC can and cannot provide in regards to information security. Concepts that will be discussed will include an update on vendor interoperability and standards; case studies of successful and not-so-successful implementations; an overview of what NAC truly can and cannot provide; discussion of both network and application requirements; and what the future holds for NAC. UC Applications with a Payoff Today There are only two reasons to adopt Unified Communications: to save your enterprise money, or to enable new revenue growth. In this session, you'll hear from technologists with experience in accomplishing both of these objectives via Unified Communications technology. Are Virtual Infrastructures Secure? More or Less???? Before x86 virtualization, network switches provided a secure perimeter to the data center. When IT organizations implement virtualization, some switches move from physical perimeter devices to virtual switches inside a physical server. This shift is an example of the new paradigm of security within a virtual infrastructure. In addition, virtualization introduces new attack surfaces and a swath of new risks. As we embrace virtualization, we must strategically approach security from the start. It is prudent to secure all infrastructures, virtual ones included. But how does the addition of a virtualization software layer affect securing the entire infrastructure from the application through the hardware? This session will explore the issues around securing a virtual infrastructure and highlight some of the tools available to assist with securing the entire environment. The Green Data Center: Your Playbook of Eco-Strategies for Today and Tomorrow The green data center strategy is to maximize current facility, infrastructure and IT investments, coupled with energy conservation tactics. Unfortunately, data centers are not static and the business's insatiable demand for IT services will eventually force you to buy new - whether it be it a new server or storage array, or a new chiller or entire facility. To maximize the green data center's value, this session will present data center managers with strategies to generate both eco and economic benefits today and into the future. Moderator - Doug Washburn, Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations , Forrester Research Doug serves IT Infrastructure & Operations professionals, primarily focusing on green IT, green business, and IT leadership skills. His research helps IT executives successfully approach green IT, determine strategy, and then move from green IT awareness to action. Previously at Forrester, Doug was the global council manager and senior advisor for the Forrester Leadership Boards IT Infrastructure & Operations Council, a best practice community for senior IT executives in $1 billion-plus organizations. In this role, Doug regularly advised clients on Green IT strategy and practices. Additionally, Doug was also an advisor on the Forrester Leadership Boards Enterprise Architecture Council. Prior to Forrester, Doug was a VP of strategy and business development for Red Oxygen, a wireless communications startup, and living and working in Australia and France. In addition, Doug co-created CU Networks, a computer networking and servicing startup serving the students of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Doug holds a B.S. in finance from University of Colorado at Boulder and was awarded the Undergraduate Certificate in Entrepreneurial Excellence. Speaker - William Kosik, Principal, Green IT Lead, HP Critical Facilities Services, delivered by EYP Bill Kosik is the Energy and Sustainability Director at HP Critical Facilities Services, delivered by EYP MCF. He assists in the development of the upcoming LEED for Data Centers standard, and is the primary author of the Energy and Atmosphere credit requirements. In addition, he provides technical assistance to the Green Grid's committee that is responsible for developing the forthcoming data center energy use rating scheme. He is also the co-developer of the upcoming ASHRAE publication, Green Tips for Data Centers. Bill is also a published author and expert on research, simulation and application of data center energy efficiency techniques. Benefits and Impact of Technology Convergence in SAN IT organizations are under increasing pressure to meet highly demanding business priorities, while dealing with day-to-day operational limitations. Technologies, such as virtualization and Unified Fabric, offer a great opportunity for IT leader to improve the responsiveness and agility of their organizations. Nonetheless, the evolutionary path to full adoption of these converged technologies in the data center involves changes to IT processes, network architecture, as well as the skill set required to support the new IT. As unified fabric architectures evolve, the network will be the storage area network (SAN) for block or file access. This creates new opportunities for further storage consolidation and network architecture optimization. This session will explore the business benefits of unified fabric with fibre channel over Ethernet (FCoE) on the SAN and the network architecture implications. This session will also discuss the business benefits of converged technologies in IT, with a particular focus to the data center, and highlight some of the implications that these technologies will have on processes and people within IT. Speaker - Errol Roberts, Distinguished Systems Engineer , Cisco With more than 16 years of networking, and telecommunications experience, Errol Roberts brings a practical understanding of how technology can solve business problems. Network Requirements for Supporting Enterprise Video Conferencing Video conferencing places significant demands o