Conference programme

From Virtualisation to Cloud Computing: Building a cost effective, flexible and agile IT Infrastructure in a dynamic world.

In times of economic challenge businesses look more and more at the pivotal role that IT has to play in helping to stabilise operations, lower costs and ultimately to enable potential growth through a scalable infrastructure.

As pressure continues for businesses to establish and evolve new initiatives, IT platforms and infrastructure cannot afford to be poorly placed to support new, evolving and pervasive business technology strategies such as e-commerce, mobile working and the shift from media consumption to media sharing.

Virtualisation and cloud computing adoption provides the transformational technologies to allow you as an IT leader to meet the requirements of:
Cost Efficiency, Flexibility and Scalability while delivering Business Agility, Increased Simplicity and Enhanced security
The business landscape is changing and concentrating on cost alone will not deliver better performance; it is the agile enterprise that will succeed. By deploying virtualisation and cloud computing technologies, businesses can focus on accelerating service delivery to improve customer experience and gain competitive advantage.

Whether you are considering desktop virtualisation across the enterprise, building a private cloud for internal users, or a public cloud on which to host external or paying customers, The Virtualisation and Cloud Computing Executive Summit will provide you with real life insights and expert analysis to help radically transform your IT processes.

The conference programme will cover the critical issues and considerations that you need to be aware of when planning your IT strategy for 2012 and beyond to “cloud-enable” your IT infrastructure.

Sessions at the summit will include keynotes, case studies and IT Leader Think Tanks covering the most relevant topics when the dual pressures of budget constraints and business demands require a radical acceleration of the adoption of virtualisation and cloud technologies.

Sessions will include:

In this keynote a leading CIO will discuss the story of their organisations’ journey from Virtualisation to Cloud Implementation.
The session will cover the business reasons for deploying virtualisation in the first instance, the real ROI opportunities, the challenges faced and successes made throughout the journey and provide a step by step guide to the evolution from virtualisation to the cloud, ensuring the leverage of valuable investment in new and legacy systems and technology.

Virtualisation has become a requisite of datacentre activity with the majority of large enterprise and public sector organisations deploying virtualisation technologies to consolidate all or part of their server infrastructure.
Although consolidation activities are a familiar concept to IT leaders, the ability to create a dynamic IT infrastructure requires a marked change in IT strategy, investment and management, affecting both IT and the business
This IT Leader Think Tank will discuss;
• How adopting dynamic IT can be justified based on operational cost reduction and reducing the burden on IT.
• What does the future hold for companies considering moving to the next level of virtualisation?
• How to get the buy in of the business to drive adoption

Virtualising your desktops offers your organisation more efficient management, higher levels of security, flexibility and lower costs through reduced hardware needed. This session will provide the answers to help you determine the levels of control, security and return on investment required by your environment.
Key topics discussed:
• Learn how desktop virtualisation can improve uptime and increase workforce productivity
• Learn how to ensure a more manageable desktop environment
• Understand how to build a robust and comprehensive business case for desktop virtualisation

In this best practice case study session, a CIO will share the successes and challenges involved when building an enterprise infrastructure in a cloud based environment:
Areas covered will include;
• The cloud - ease of use, private / public, scalability, risk reliability, cost, security
• SaaS, MaaS and IaaS (software/storage as a service, mail as a service, infrastructure as a service)

Those organisations utilising Hybrid Cloud, through the use of traditional IT infrastructure in combination with cloud computing for maximum effect, will say that they have the best of both worlds. They can choose to carry out critical operations like business intelligence in their own data centres, while using cloud computing for more process-intensive tasks.
But what are the true benefits and drawbacks of using a Hybrid Cloud Model?
This IT Leader Think Tank will cover;
• How hybrid cloud technology can deliver flexible and secure IT services – and what this means for you.
• Will hybrid cloud computing become a critical part of IT strategy for most organisations in the next few years?
• What are the real challenges surrounding Hybrid Cloud Adoption?

Web services and e-commerce sites are great places to start using public cloud services. Learn from the experience of organisations that have used cloud to deliver flexible web services that can be sized dynamically to meet changing demands, while only paying for what is needed.
In this IT Leader Think Tank you will be able to discuss your concerns with peers from other End-user organisations to see how they have approached the issues that you face.

The unmanaged spread and uncontrolled use of cloud services and applications for email, storage, project management, document editing and more inside the enterprise may pose more than a simple threat to company data.
How do you ensure proper cloud governance, open discussion and education to help users understand the risks and consequences of uncontrolled and hidden adoption.
This Think Tank Session will share best practice to create a roadmap setting out exactly which corporate cloud services need to be put in place.

This IT Leader Think Tank will discuss the considerations to be aware of when deploying virtualisation and cloud solutions to transform your business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities.
Key areas covered;
• How to assess the value of Virtual / Cloud Infrastructures to Business Continuity
• Best practice advice to automate data and application recovery across physical and virtual environments
• How to improve and validate the effectiveness of your disaster recovery and business continuity plans without disrupting the business
• How virtualisation and cloud solutions can overcome the challenges of Expense, Complexity and Downtime.

While emerging technologies have created fantastic new methods of communication and collaboration for enterprises, many large organisations struggle with managing multifaceted and complex IT environments of physical, virtual and cloud based infrastructure.
This IT Leader Think Tank will provide an opportunity to discuss the best ways to manage your environment:
• How to create and effectively manage a flexible and agile IT infrastructure
• How to ensure Effective VM and Cloud Infrastructure Management
• How to leverage the cost effectiveness of virtualisation and cloud computing technologies

While the benefits of cloud computing certainly makes life easier for the CIO the question of security and compliance remains the major barrier to cloud adoption.
This informative case study will discuss how through managing security strategy effectively, security in the Cloud stops being a barrier and becomes an enabler.
• Data security – on the wire and at rest
• Identity and access control
• Integrating the cloud into security operations

As Microsoft acquires Skype, Google launches Google Talk and Salesforce picks up VSee, the race for VoIP and unified communications heats up. Virtualisation and cloud based solutions appear to provide the optimal platforms to provide organisations with the ultimate mix of communications, messaging and collaboration to ensure a truly agile enterprise.
This session will cover:
• What are the new and cutting edge technologies to consider and what questions should you be asking?
• What do you need to consider to empower your mobile workers to increase productivity while allowing them a fantastic level of convenience?