April 2010 conference programme

Storage represents a significant portion of IT-spend across the globe. With increasing use of server and desktop virtualization, more data control from applications and multitudes of technology options on storage platforms themselves, building an efficient and highly performing storage environment for today’s IT world is increasingly challenging. This talk will focus on the key inflection points faced by technology decision makers, the vendors and innovations that will have the biggest impact on enterprise storage over the next several years. No conversation around storage would be complete without covering efficiency, so best practices for cutting costs effectively and safely will be included. Some highlights will be:
• Next generation storage architectures
• Shrinking the data footprint- storage virtualization technologies like wide striping, de-duplication and thin provisioning
• The increasing storage functionality of key application stacks- options for virtual server environments, Oracle, Exchange and others

For many organisations, the savings that come from server consolidation are the primary reason for vesting in virtualisation. However, virtualisation has become an ever more important tool for any organisation looking not just to reduce costs but to increase availability and enhance business agility.
This session will look at the issues facing organisations looking to deploy virtualisation, how to overcome these and the impact that virtualisation brings.
Key issues covered:
• From hype cycle to mainstream – what are the benefits?
• Measuring the impact and benefits of virtualisation to the organisation.
• Managing the streamlined server estate.

Desktop virtualisation is more than simply moving desktop management to the data centre and a successful VDI deployment requires staying focused on the ultimate goal, namely delivering core applications effectively to users
This session focuses on the best practice utilisation of virtual desktop infrastructure technology to enhance desktop flexibility and IT agility.
Key issues covered:
• How to deploy and manage your desktop infrastructure effectively.
• How can VDI technology enable the consolidation of virtual desktops while managing your entire desktop not just applications?
• What are the drivers behind desktop virtualisation and the challenges in architecting and implementing vdi solutions?
• How to provide a winning user experience through the VDI process while ensuring the requirements of diverse user groups are met

Gary Herbert, previously Programme Manager at Lloyds Banking Group, he is now Chairman at i-Innovate UK Ltd.

In a recent survey of over 2,000 IT and security managers around the globe, results suggested that there was a lack of consensus as to whether or not virtualisation deployment made security easier or harder.
There can however be absolutely no confusion as to the importance for an organisation in ensuring the correct architecture and implementation of security within the virtualised environment.
The positives of virtualisation are well documented, but, like any tool, with all of its unquestionable benefits, virtualisation brings with it old and new security issues. Key issues discussed in this session:
• How virtualisation affects IT security
• What are the practical steps to follow to ensure successful and secure virtualisation?
• Understanding security and regulatory compliance issues
• How to better secure your virtual environment and ensure technology doesn’t outrun security best practices

While virtualisation brings many obvious benefits to an organisation, the dependence on a unified, centralised data centre means that Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery become critical areas of focus.
This session will look at the considerations and best practice involved in implementing an effective and efficient plan to ensure that servers, storage, infrastructure, applications, middleware and network are all covered in the face of disruption and disaster.
Key issues covered:
• How to develop an effective disaster recovery plan
• Critical challenges of ensuring DR and BC in a virtual environment and how virtualization can benefit your disaster recovery and high availability strategy

With some industry analysts predicting global spending on IT cloud services to reach $42 billion by 2012 and capturing a quarter of IT spending growth in the same period, there is no doubt that The Cloud is moving from Blue Sky to reality.
This session will cover a number of key areas including,
• Understanding the benefits and pitfalls of cloud technology
• How you can maximize performance and minimize costs of your IT-infrastructure by utilising cloud based virtualisation technology
• ‘making the move’ –what are the first few steps between internal virtualisation and cloud computing
• How to deal with security, compatibility, and compliance issues in the cloud

With the relative ease of virtualisation deployment, many organisations now face the challenges associated with “VM Sprawl”. This session will discuss how to best to utilise VM Management services and tools to assist in the control of IT spending, the increase in IT flexibility, and how to manage virtualised server assets efficiently.

This session will cover the 5 steps to ensure virtualisation success.
Key issues covered include:
• How virtualisation helps to standardise procedures
• Achieving consistency across multiple offices
• Storage centralisation
• Storage Virtualisation
• Ensuring Network consistency
• The Big Rules for Stability

Michael Crader, Director, x86 Virtual Infrastructure