THE CIO FORUM is an outstanding opportunity to meet with both a slew of vendors and at the same time, a slew of peers, and its high quality seminars, conference and keynotes add a whole new dimension to the work you're doing.
Director of Debt Capital Markets
Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc
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The Conference
We create The CIO Forum conference program based on research and feedback from our clients, senior level IT executives who, like you, are dealing with critical issues on a daily basis.
Conference sessions are given by industry experts and IT executives who have a clear understanding of the business obstacles inherent in controlling large technology departments and how they can be managed and resolved.
Through small workshops and roundtables, you are able to share best practices, successful case studies, and receive opinions and suggestions from your peers.The entire conference is built around helping you become a more effective executive and opening doors to new perspectives and points of view.
If you would like to contribute ideas for content on the conference program or be a presenter at the Forum, please contact Steve McCuaig at smccuaig@richmondevents.com or at 416 901 9181.
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Innovate or Die: Building a Culture of Strategy and Innovation
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| Opening Keynote |
| Douglas Merrill, Former CIO, Google |
Douglas Merrill provides a rare look into how Google fosters its renowned culture of innovation. In a fast-paced talk, he contrasts Google's strengths with those of other companies that are struggling to stay relevant. The best companies know that innovation is a process you can learn and implement. Merrill lays out a blueprint for innovation as strategy, as culture. How do you foster ideas in their infancy? What corporate structures drive innovations, and which ones get in the way? And how do you recognize the innovation that's already happening in your organization? Innovation, he shows us, is already happening at your organization, at every organization. But the mediocre companies kill it unwittingly. Having championed innovation at Google, Merrill demonstrates, with striking clarity, how to design a different kind of company -- one where culture, strategy and innovation are interrelated and drive massive, sustainable growth.
Biography:
The former Chief Information Officer at Google, Douglas Merrill championed innovation at the company as it grew from Internet start up into one of the world's most admired organizations.
At Google, he oversaw a team of 1,500 as well as all aspects of technology, and several high profile projects including Google Checkout, now a multi-billion dollar business. Merrill has also served as COO of New Music at EMI Group, and as VP of Infrastructure and HR Strategy at Charles Schwab. In academia, he was an Information Scientist at the RAND Corporation. He holds a Ph.D. in cognitive science from Princeton and is the author of Getting Organized in the Google Era: How to Get Stuff Out of Your Head, Find It When You Need It, and Get It Done Right.
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The Evolution of Cloud Computing (and its issues)
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| Breakout session |
| Speaker tba |
The pros and cons of Cloud computing remain the same over the years, but the needs and issues that we bring to the table have certainly changed. Remote devices and trust in a fragmenting workforce, the real importance (or lack of it) of “Green”, data loss and organisational nightmares, to name a few.
Our IT landscape constantly brings new stresses and dynamics, therefore the questions we are asking surrounding the Cloud also need to evolve.
Whether you currently reside “in the Cloud” or are considering adoption, this session would prove valuable to discuss the good, bad and the ugly of Cloud computing.
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The Future CIO
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| Breakout session |
| Speaker tba |
The role of Chief Information Officer has changed of the years, shifting through directives as “technical leader”, “salesperson” to “evangelist” and beyond. We are both teachers and motivators, leaders and project managers. We are called upon to drive the business forward while securing the past. Our reach is across the company, yet at times we fight for budget.
How can we be all things to all people? By sharing ideas, strengths, wins and losses, together.
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IT Security
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| Breakout session |
| Speaker tba |
The myth about IT Security, much like a golf swing, is that there is a catch-all solution to your problems; the “one thing” you need to implement/invest in/outsource that will take care of any and every issue. The reality is that you add, subtract and change pieces, keeping in tune with the threats that could present themselves.
Keep in touch with the most recent threats, and the ways to combat them in this interactive session.
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Project Case Study
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| Breakout session |
| Speaker tba |
| Theory is one thing, but war stories – warts and all – is often where the true learnings lie. Go through a large-scale case study with those who were involved, and pick their brains as to what was valuable to the successes, what contributed to the failures and what they'd do differently if they did it all over again. |
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Change Management
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| Breakout session |
| Speaker tba |
It is one thing to manage a large IT overhaul project, getting budgets and timelines in tune with stakeholder needs, however getting the users bought in is a completely different issue in itself.
Change, especially when it comes to habitual actions in the workplace, is often met with resistance. How do you communcate change to the workforce? Are you educating features, selling benefits or both?
Join colleagues as you discuss best-practice in this critical point in IT transformation.
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Everything you wanted to know about Social Media but were afraid to ask
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| Breakout session |
| Speaker tba |
Social Media, as a medium, seems to have skipped the “fad” phase and gone straight into the mainstream. By nature it moves quickly, evolving with the users' needs, all without a manual!
This session is designed to outline the beginnings, the state of Social Media today, and discuss where it will be heading. All questions welcome, from beginner to advanced.
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IT Security Roundtable
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| Breakout session |
| Speaker tba |
| Join colleagues to benchmark the latest trends, policies, technologies and threats with your peers in this intimate, interactive environment. |
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The Opportunity of Green IT
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| Breakout session |
| Speaker tba |
| We all should be as green as possible for the good of both the environment and the PR department. But what about the bottom line? Where are the opportunities to drive the business through green initiatives, instead of in spite of them? |
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The Pillars of Leadership
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| Breakout session |
| Speaker tba |
Leadership is not something that you are born with; It is something learned, through experience, through example, through necessity. Understanding the principle of leadership is the main focus of this session, designed to help attendees become (or continue to be) great leaders.
Over the coming months, we will be adding more detail and recruiting speakers. To give your feedback on any of the sessions, or to recommend a speaker please contact Steve McCuaig at smccuaig@richmondevents.com.
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Highlights from past Conference Programs
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It’s Your Ship
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| Keynote |
| D. Michael Abrashoff |
The story of how the USS Benfold was transformed into the best ship in the Navy rekindles audiences with enthusiasm to make a difference at work. More than that, people take away real tools they can put to use right away.
Since the readiness of a ship is a matter of life and death in conflict situations, every crewmember’s contribution matters. Mike Abrashoff’s It’s Your Ship philosophy empowered his crew to take charge and use ingenuity and initiative to improve every aspect of the way things were done – all in the interest of improving efficiency and readiness.
As Mike Abrashoff talks about creating successful change within the confines of a military operation – people begin to see the possibilities for transforming their own organizations. |
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OPENING KEYNOTE ADDRESS
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| Sunday, September 13th |
| CIO Leadership Track |
David Plouffe, Campaign Manager, Obama for America
”Leadership Lessons from a Presidential Campaign Manager”
It's no secret that presidential campaigns are fast-paced marathons. A plethora of movies and books have covered this pinnacle of politics, proving that the race for the executive office is not for the faint of heart. The ability to effectively lead and soundly manage the presidential campaign is a rare skill held by but a few political experts.
These experts have somehow learned to balance strategy with resource management, stakeholder input, the media and crisis. David Plouffe stands as one of these rare leaders, who not only steered his team to success but also inspired a new level of innovation, building an organization worth nearly one billion dollars in two years. He shares his personal story of leadership and management in a presentation that highlights:
• How to infiltrate your entire organization with steadfast leadership designed to produce incredible results
• How to build a culture of creativity without being burdened by the past.
• Why leadership during crisis is the true test of a leader
• How to stay the course and not be distracted by diversions |
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The Changing Role of the CIO
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| Closing Address |
| Harvey Koeppel, Executive Director of the Center for CIO Leadership |
Mr. Koeppel will address the changing role of the Chief Information Officer, driven by the growing opportunity and increased demand for CIOs to make a significant contribution to the creation of sustainable business value, well beyond their more traditional role of “keeping the lights on” and reducing IT spending year over year.
His talk will examine the key dynamics that are fueling the need for significant transformation across the enterprise, being driven by strategic customer focus and enabled through innovative approaches to business models, processes and technologies.
Research-driven points of view from the rest of the C-suite will be shared as additional color and context to the real trends that are reshaping of the profession. Similarly, both qualitative and quantitative findings of what the global CIO community itself is saying about these new challenges and opportunities will be presented.
A newly conceived competency model for Chief Information Officers will be exposed which was explicitly designed to enable CIOs to identify and acquire the new set of skills deemed most critical to their success within the continually evolving global enterprise.
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CLOSING KEYNOTE ADDRESS
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| A Business Ethics Lesson for Today’s Business Leaders |
| Mark Whitacre, Former Pres., ADM |
Subject of this fall's upcoming Warner Brothers and Steven Soderbergh-directed feature film, "The Informant" starring Matt Damon as Mark Whitacre
Mark Whitacre was the highest-level executive of a Fortune 500 company to become a whistleblower in US history. After blowing the whistle in 1992, Mark then worked undercover with the FBI for 3 years wearing a wire everyday in one of the largest price-fixing cases in history.
His story is an important personal and business ethics lesson about "doing the right thing" as well as a story of hope, family commitment, how to overcome extreme adversity, and how redemption and second chances really do exist in America.
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Reducing IT Overhead Without Changing the World
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Workshop |
| David Cortese, Vice President and Divisional CIO for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment |
Overhead budgets for IT continue to climb at a significant pace, eating up a larger portion of the overall budget along the way and taking money away from capital investments that can provide strategic advantage. This session will cover the spending trends and market dynamics happening in the industry and give specific and proven methods for how to reduce overhead spend without having to take drastic actions that impact people, infrastructure or service levels.
Discovery Topics:
- Now is the time to challenge the status quo on overhead investments
- The increasingly critical link to controlling costs with your partners
- Merger and acquisition mania – why you should care
- Scrubbing the decks – a new approach to managing expenses
- Driving short and long term value from your partners
- Creative cost savings – how you and your partners can win together
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IT Compliance and Governance with 3rd Party Vendors
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| Workshop |
| Tony Spinnelli, CISO, Equifax |
| Assuring Governance and Managing Risk of 3rd Parties takes a multi-industry view of the compliance challenges that typically persist even after an organization has endeavored to manage the core compliance risks of an organization. Given the business strategy to support the arbitrage of labor through outsourcing application development and maintenance, business process outsourcing, and data center operations outsourcing all industries are therefore inherently exposed to the inherent compliance risks their key 3rd party business providers introduce through all means of connectivity back to the organization. This session transparently discusses the drivers of 3rd party risk, the taxonomy of the compliance risk, the unique challenges of 3rd party compliance programs, and offers solution frameworks to begin to manage compliance risk from your 3rd parties. |
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The CIO’s Road to Innovation Leader
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| Workshop |
| Ken Bohlen, Chief Innovation Officer, Textron Inc. |
As the first Fortune 500 Company executive to take on the title of “Chief Innovation Officer, “ Ken Bohlen is a passionate advocate for the process and practice of innovative thinking.
In this engaging peer session, Ken will lead a wide-ranging discussion about how innovation happens within large enterprises.
Although the bulk of his duties are outside IT now, Ken believes his fellow technology leaders can have enormous influence in steering their companies down the road to innovation. “IT is a fundamental groundbreaker in innovation,” he says.
Ken will also discuss the importance of learning when to change course, how to manage the “white space” and work between departmental silos. |
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The Role of CIO in a Web 2.0 World: Embracing Social Software in the Enterprise
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| Workshop |
| Ralph Loura, SVP of IT, Medicis |
Web 2.0 and Social Networking sites and technologies are everywhere in the media. Your teens are on MySpace, your friends from high school are Facebooking, and your mother just sent her first tweet. Are these all just a big online distraction, or should today’s CIO be embracing these technologies? In this session we’ll discuss the evolving landscape, identify potential opportunities to explore new services and service models, and highlight areas that remain of concern as this model evolves.
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Group Insights Into the Future of Leadership Development - Interactive Discussion
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| Round Table |
| Brooks Fisher, CLO, Intuit |
Leadership development is often seen as a set of “soft skills” that are personally mediated by leaders/instructors/coaches connecting with individuals and small groups (think “The GE Way” and Jack Welch). New social media tools combined with cost pressures are changing the expected modalities, expectations and channels of leadership development. And with the economy in a downturn, leadership development has to be fundamentally re-thought, designed and launched in a short period of time. In this interactive discussion, learn what senior learning and IT executives have found to maintain and communicate a clear and consistent message of what values, mindsets, and behaviors are the most effective in the view of the organization and its leaders when it is filtered through new media and new experiences.
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Developing Executive Leadership Skills for a Competitive Advantage
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| Workshop |
| Ray Bender, Author and Business Strategist |
The traditional management techniques that have served us well for almost 100 years are no longer valid. Today most companies are over managed and under led. In chaotic times organizations need to be led not managed.
This session will address how to develop your Executive Leadership Skills and increase the leadership capabilities at all levels of the organization. Your skills and the ability to spread these skills will assist your organization in achieving and maintaining a competitive advantage. |
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FBI Workshop: Malware: Threats to your Company's Network – Solutions for You
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| Workshop |
| Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation |
- Gain a deeper understanding of current and future threats to your company's network
- Learn about the threats from Social Engineering, Foreign Hackers and Insiders
- Commercially available solutions - are you getting your money's worth?
- Incident handling - what to do and who to call
- Liaison - building your company's relationship with law enforcement
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Business Relationship Management
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| Workshop |
| Ray Bender, Author and Business Strategist |
Your customers, both internal and external, need to be treated as assets. If you lose a customer it may not be possible to replace them. This could lead to outsourcing or management changes.
Business Relationship Management is about shaping your customers perceptions of your capabilities. Are you and your organization viewed as simply delivering a commodity that meets standards or as a trusted advisor that can help solve organizational issues?
This session will provide you with the tools, models, and techniques for you to build the required relationships and become a trusted advisor. |
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We're agile and still failing. What do we do now?
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| Workshop |
| Christophe Louvion, CTO, Gorilla Nation Media |
Over the past 10 years, agile has challenged the warterfall model and radically changed how teams deliver. With a fast growing adoption, agile has reached a mainstream status. Case studies demonstrate outstanding results. Though implementations often fail, leaving a bad after taste to the business and the teams. This presentation will cover the roots of agile development, provide specific adoption failure modes and the changes an organization must be prepared to embrace for setting itself for success.
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World Class IT Negotiation Strategies: Achieving Significant Cost Reductions with Solution Providers
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| Workshop |
Brad Friedman, CIO, Burlington Coat Factory,
Jon Winsett, Partner, NPI |
Business Problem: In today’s economic climate, the pressure is on for financial services firms to reduce costs. No line item is immune to the scrutiny for ways to cut spending, especially IT. One area deserving focus is on the price paid for products and services for technology. Fact: The great pricing disparity that exists in the technology market has created an environment where no two companies pay the same for technology. With increasing inspection on every IT dollar spent, how can you be sure you are getting a fair price?
Solution: We’ll share what strategies are working (and not working) in leading companies today that can help you navigate ever-changing market conditions, trends, and pricing to ensure you pay a fair price for all your IT expenditures – all the while strengthening your vendor relationships without the usual “roughing up” through the buying process.
- Discover techniques that create additional leverage and control
- Learn opening tactics that lay the groundwork for successful negotiations
- Understand the areas where suppliers are most likely to compromise
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Organizational Change Management with the Gale Agile Development Approach
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| Workshop |
| Gary Baker, SVP & CIO, Gale Cengage |
Learn how Gale, a traditional publisher of reference books for the library and educational markets, addressed the organizational change issues and process implementation hurdles when it used its own version of agile development, GADA (Gale Agile Development Approach), to transform how it develops large online knowledge portals, specialized online databases and e-reference products. In six months, Gale had all five development teams using GADA practices, including Test Drive Development, Continuous Integration, Pair Programming, velocity metrics, etc. The business units are enthusiastically embracing and participating in GADA while reaping the benefits of faster and more flexible product development.
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CIO Perspective on the Economy and its long term impact on IT
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| Round Table |
| Jim Crawford, SVP/ Regional CIO, Kaiser Permanente |
CIO discussions about the current economic climate generally focus on uncertainty and tight IT budgets. However, this climate can have a tremendous benefits to IT's long-term success. Based on real-world perspectives and designed to generate discussion, this session will stimulate CIO attendees to think about how they can build strength and alignment within their own organizations that will pay dividends for years to come.
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Aligning IT with Business Strategy
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| Workshop |
| Bob K. Davis, VP, Global Strategy, Change and Performance, Xerox |
Join Robert K. Davis as he describes how the Xerox IT organization has successfully aligned its business objectives with the company’s goals. We will review the steps necessary to realistically partner with business and deliver intrinsic value through technology - plus we will talk about the critical factors that must be understood to make this work in your organization.
Davis will cover the key elements of Xerox’s IT and Business Partnership: Leadership, Process, and Talent – as well as factors needed for success and lessons learned along the way.
Takeaways include:
- Leadership requirements for success.
- An overview of the process Xerox IT implemented to establish alignment to goals and solidify the relationship with the business.
- The elements of the Xerox “Build Our Talent” resource development program.
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Advanced Metrics Management for the Enterprise
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| Workshop |
| Christopher Dean, Founder and CEO of PureShare Inc. |
Managing an organization profitably mandates ready access to performance metrics derived from a myriad of systems and technologies. This interactive session showcases best practices in creating an advanced metrics management infrastructure to accomplish this, and as well, quickly transform an organization from being in a constant state of fire-fighting to a more productive, proactive state.
Session participants will have an opportunity to explore various techniques to propagate key measures as efficiently as possible, including the use of intranets, portals and wireless technologies. Live examples will demonstrate how to optimize the communication of key metrics to various audiences including executives, management, customers and staff. We will also review several enterprise case studies from organizations including Time-Warner, Union-Pacific, Pepsico, American Express and Microsoft, to demonstrate how implementing an effective performance management strategy can be easier and much more effective than traditional BI approaches.
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IT spending in a tough economy: Is going green compatible with cost cutting?
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| Round Table |
| Joshua Holbrook, Director of Research, Yankee Group |
The economic storm of 2008-2009 puts unprecedented pressure on IT perform with fewer economic and human resources. IT organizations, the engine of many businesses, are being asked to perform up to pervious standards without the fuel that keeps the engine humming. Simultanously, organizations are expected to have a green story. In this session delegates will discuss the role of technology and services in driving costs out of the organization and whether that trend is compatible with going green. Delegates will discuss case studies in coping with smaller budgets, tighter capital and investing in green technology.
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“DESTINY BY CHOICE, NOT BY CHANCE” - Driving Linkage between Business Strategy and IT Capability
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| Workshop |
| Caren Shiozaki, CIO, TMST Inc. |
The CIO community has been wringing our hands over “business-IT alignment” (and the lack thereof) for some time now. But is our focus misplaced? Yes, there is “something missing” and the current economic situation has made this more of a hot button in a lot of companies. A different perspective can make the technologies organization more relevant and firmly establish it as a value-added partner. Learn about the difference between “alignment” vs “linkage”, the 2 key roles that Technologies plays in driving business success, and what tools might be helpful in situations where strategic collaboration between business and technologies may be a new concept or is struggling to get off the ground.
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Managing Up in a Down Economy – Roundtable Discussion
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| Workshop |
| Tom Hoffman, Editor at Large, Computerworld |
| Computerworld Editor at Large Tom Hoffman will lead an interactive roundtable discussion on steps that CIOs can take to optimize their IT investments and resources in a challenging economy while continuing to deliver value to the enterprise. Topics will include steps that can be taken to reduce fixed IT costs and increasing variable IT costs, plus other differences between how CIOs are approaching strategic IT investments compared to previous economic cycles. |
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Virtualization Strategies: Beyond the Server
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| Round Table |
| Zeus Kerravala, VP of Enterprise Research,Yankee Group |
Virtualization has been a mainstream strategy in the data center for a number of years now. However, it's use has been limited primarily to server virtualization with the main goal being reducing the total number of servers in the date center. However, technologies such as cloud computing, storage virtualization, workload mobility, desktop virtualization and other adjacent technologies are right around the corner bringing us much closer to the realization of the vision of the virtual data center. In this think tank delegates can discuss the current uses of virtualization technologies, share best practices and discuss the strategy surrounding the long term use of virtualization and cloud based services.
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