Key Themes

Enterprise Voice and the evolution to Unified Communications
Mark Summerson, General Manager Unified Communications, BT Global Services

Enterprises today are struggling in the current environment with the eternal challenges of removing cost whilst improving their businesses. Unified Communications is often seen as a way to deliver the business improvement, through improved productivity & better collaboration, however this must always be underpinned by cost savings for any business case to make sense.

In parallel there are 2 worlds colliding, the fast moving, regularly refreshed world of IT and the much slower but very reliable world of Voice. In this presentation, hear some examples of how BT has helped customers address all these pressures simultaneously and provided a roadmap to Unified Communications that can capture the costs benefits over a continual migration process, with Voice and VoIP as a key feature at the heart of it.

Headline areas covered will be:

• Vision of UC – what UC can deliver
• Business case creation
• UC Roadmap
• Gradual migration strategy
• Cultural change and User Adoption strategies

Ethernet Storage: Benefits & Futures
SNIA Europe & Cisco

This presentation presents an overview of Ethernet-based storage networking technologies and solutions. It examines the relevant storage protocols, features and benefits of storage systems using those protocols, and where they are deployed in a typical IT environment today. The presentation goes on to examine the latest developments in Ethernet standards, and storage protocols, including Data Center Bridging, FCoE and pNFS, and how they may change the storage landscape over the next few years.

Storage Considerations in Virtual Environments
SNIA Europe & Cisco

Many disk technologies both old and new are being used to augment tried and true backup and data protection methodologies to deliver better information and application restoration performance. These technologies work in parallel with the existing backup paradigm. This session will discuss many of these technologies in detail. Important considerations of data protection include performance, scale, regulatory compliance, recovery objectives and cost. Technologies include contemporary backup, disk based backups, snapshots, continuous data protection and capacity optimised storage.

Datacentre Optimisation: Extending your IT Beyond the Datacentre to the Cloud
Fredrik Sjostedt, Director – EMEA Product & Solutions Marketing, VMware, Inc

This session will uncover new cloud offerings you can expect from VMware and its partners, as well as how your internal datacenter can leverage external clouds to deliver services that save you time and money, but still give you the security and control you need.

Virtualisation, The Green Business Agenda & Your Bottomline
Chris Bullock, Climate Savers Computing / S3 Consulting

Introduced carefully, virtualisation will make a major contribution to efficiency improvements, carbon reduction commitments and your bottomline. The chances are that it is already in your IT strategy, but what do you do next and how can you maximise the returns?

Transforming your Business with Collaboration
David Moore-Kelly and Ben Hopper, Business Transformation Managers, Cisco

In most businesses, IT departments have done all they can to reduce procurement costs and reduce their own IT spend through deployment of new technologies like IP Telephony. The potential for significant savings in the future is limited. In addition, on average, the proportion of total company OpEx spend on IT is just 4% so the biggest potential for cost savings is outside of IT.

Analysts advise companies that the biggest impact IT can make on bottom line is by focusing on:

• Enabling innovation, restructuring and business process improvement
• Enabling cost savings in the wider business
  

Collaboration solutions used effectively have enormous potential in both these areas.

Deployment of effective, easy to use Collaboration solutions and the integration of Collaboration technologies directly in to business processes have the potential to be truly transformative. In addition, Collaboration (particularly the use of Telepresence) can enable significant cost savings outside of IT.

Through real life examples, learn more about how Collaboration can help you enable both innovation and savings within your business.

The Long-term Business Benefits of Embracing Advanced Web Technology
Bob Tarzey, Analyst and Director, Quocirca

Cost-benefit analyses are easy to build when IT projects deliver a short-term ROI – but they are much more difficult when the opportunities are more speculative, as they are with many advanced web applications, so called web 2.0 for collaborative networking and web 3.0, or the semantic web, which is still largely conceptual. Few strategists would deny that the new wave of tools will change the shape of enterprise communications and business intelligence over the next decade – but the business case is currently hard to make in financial terms, just as it would have been for email at the end of the last century.

Bob Tarzey from Quocirca explores the significant opportunities arising from the latest developments in this area and proposes a re-think of traditional ROI models to look at the total value proposition for advanced web technology.

Remote and Mobile Working: The Green Alternative
Ian Jones, Head of Research & Content, NCC

Ian Jones , Head of Research & Content at the National Computing Centre explores how remote and mobile working practices can help organisations and individuals reduce environmental impact, whilst improving performance

Green Skies Thinking: Cloud Computing & Software-as-a-Service
Dr Andy Hopkirk, Head of Programmes and Projects, NCC

The green potential of Cloud Computing & Software-as-a-Service models of IT service delivery is widely touted. In this presentation, Dr Andy Hopkirk (National Computing Centre) will briefly review the supposed benefits, potential difficulties in the context of NCC members' comments and observations from an NCC Round Table on the Future of Software Services Delivery.

Cloud-Sourcing: The Future of IT Outsourcing
David Greenway, Outsourcing UK Service Management Consultant, Capgemini

Difficult global economic trading conditions have resulted in significant challenges to IT budgets, with CEOs currently more focused on cost control and operational efficiency than business-enabled change. Cloud-sourcing is new outsourcing opportunity for rapidly serving the needs of the business while drastically reducing IT opex and capex costs.

Based on many years providing long-term outsourcing contracts, Capgemini explains how adoption of new sourcing models can deliver significant benefits in cost reduction and operational efficiency. This thought-provoking keynote will provide a pragmatic perspective on successful outsourcing using new cloud-based models, using Capgemini’s extensive experience of governance and service management, service integration and orchestration.

Cloud Computing: Panacea or Parasol
John Doody, BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT

Cloud Computing was very much the buzz towards the end of the last decade and will be embedding itself as 2010 progresses. The problem is that we can’t touch it but we feel instinctively that we need to control it.

It won’t necessarily be the panacea for your IT Strategy in this decade, in spite of how some sales people might paint it and you probably need to have at least an umbrella (or parasol) available for protection against any rainy days ahead. It is important to decide what’s right for you, eg. engaging in a public or private cloud – ensuring that you know where your data is and how it is being protected at all times.

Managing the Cloud effectively requires all the following elements be brought into scope:

• developing a shared ethos around handling everything “cloud”
• mechanisms for addressing restitution in the event of a breach or loss of data
• ensuring that jurisdictional boundaries are factored in
• ensuring responsiveness of the supplier to any change requests or concerns
• ensuring availability of the data in all possible circumstances
• building a liability model that allows for penalties when things go wrong
• seeking evidential quality audit results from providers, and their providers
• implementing controls against misuse of data

This session will discuss some of the experiences so far in dealing with cloud initiatives and focus on what needs to be the mainstay of a successful management approach - the principles of good governance – combining legal governance, identification of ownership, compliance with legislative requirements, identification of the information assets being used in the service provision selection of safeguards, the application of guarantees, the adoption of standardisation, the utilisation of certification, auditing, etc.

Datacenter Optimisation: Extending your IT Beyond the Datacenter to the Cloud
Fredrik Sjostedt, Director – EMEA Product Marketing, VMware

Fredrik leads the VMware’s product marketing organisation in EMEA and is responsible for the Go-to-Market strategy for VMware’s entire product and solutions portfolio. He has almost 20 years of experience in the IT industry, gathered in both technical and marketing roles with hardware/software vendors like Apple, 3Com and Symantec.

Fredrik studied systems analysis and mathematics at Lund University in Sweden and holds a postgraduate diploma in Management from Henley Business School in the UK.

Closing Security Gaps through Advanced Security Operations
Chris Bridgland, Senior Director of Global Services EMEA, RSA

As security threats become more sophisticated and compliance requirements more stringent, many security operations can't keep pace. They have no way to pull together meaningful, real-time intelligence from across their systems, so they can't react quickly enough to prevent security incidents, or limit damage when breaches occur.

Beyond Coding - Adopting the Right Mindset for Secure Software Development
Alessandro Moretti, CISSP, European Advisory Board, (ISC)2 and
Executive Director IT Security Risk Management, UBS Investment Bank

Despite the availability of secure coding practices, vulnerabilities persist throughout the application development lifecycle. But while some insecurities can be blamed on the chosen technology, software products are predominantly insecure due to two other elements – people and processes.

Based on two years of focus group and job task analysis research, this thought-provoking keynote provides a comprehensive overview of the security measures - and indeed mindset - that must be woven into the systems development life cycle, reviewing also the common pressures and knowledge gaps amongst all stakeholders within the software development process.

Secure Systems Development – The Emperor’s Got No Clothes!
Andrea Simmons, Security Forum Strategic Panel, BCS The Chartered Institute of IT

The mantra of "embedding best practice from the onset" applies to all things IT, so why is such a crucial aspect as security so commonly treated as an afterthought? Why do so many projects end up taking a largely reactive approach to this key area, relying on bolt-on solutions and software 'patches' that may only offer a short-term fix and often go on to cause a multitude of system conflicts after every update? Andrea Simmons from BCS puts forward the case for adopting a more holistic approach to secure systems development – brought to life by some real-life horror stories from the public sector, where users are most vulnerable and always under public scrutiny. This is a ‘warts and all’ session… so expect a few fireworks!

Green Skies Thinking: Cloud Computing & Software-as-a-Service
Dr Andy Hopkirk, Head of Programmes and Projects, NCC

The green potential of Cloud Computing & Software-as-a-Service models of IT service delivery is widely touted. In this presentation, Dr Andy Hopkirk (National Computing Centre) will briefly review the supposed benefits, potential difficulties in the context of NCC members' comments and observations from an NCC Round Table on the Future of Software Services Delivery.

Sustaining your Green IT Strategy
Ian Brooks, Sustainability Leader for IBM's work at Defra

Whether you already have a Green IT strategy or are wondering about developing one, what should you do to ensure it makes a real difference to your business and your IT department? How can it become a day to day consideration for your architects, analysts, approvals processes and infrastructure choices? And how can you articulate the benefits?

Remote and Mobile Working: The Green Alternative
Ian Jones, Head of Research & Content, NCC

Ian Jones, Head of Research & Content at the National Computing Centre explores how remote and mobile working practices can help organisations and individuals reduce environmental impact, whilst improving performance.

Virtualisation, The Green Business Agenda & Your Bottomline
Chris Bullock, Climate Savers Computing / S3 Consulting

Introduced carefully, virtualisation will make a major contribution to efficiency improvements, carbon reduction commitments and your bottomline. The chances are that it is already in your IT strategy, but what do you do next and how can you maximise the returns?

Project ROI: Practical Steps to Building an Accurate Cost-Benefit Model
Chris Tiernan, MD, Grosvenor Consultancy Services & Chair, Institute for the Management of Information Systems

Business cases should be more than cash grabs or accounting forms. If written well and kept up to date they are invaluable for assisting in the selection of the best areas in which to invest and for managing investments throughout their lives. Chris will describe how this can be achieved.

Managing Risk When Making Major IT Investments
John Rosbotham, Director, Project & Technology Assurance,
PricewaterhouseCoopers

The majority of so-called 'IT Projects' are actually about business change, with IT simply acting as the facilitator for that change. Statistically, achieving a successful project targeting specific business benefits is very difficult: the risks of failure are high and need to be managed throughout the project lifecycle.

Choosing the appropriate technology is clearly important, as is the technology implementation partner, but equally important is the need for appropriate business engagement and ensuring that the intended benefits are recognised and achieved.

John Rosbotham from PwC highlights the risks of delivering IT projects from vendor sourcing through to delivering the associated change in the business (including emerging risks), and illustrates the key mechanisms to help manage these risks.

Project Accountability: Reducing the Cost of Your IT & Outsourcing Contracts
Allan Watton, Best Practice Group

Despite improvements in the quality of project management and governance, projects involving managed service providers in both the IT and outsourcing field continue to run over budget, rarely realise the expectations of the organisation’s executives and are usually very late.

Some recent court rulings help us learn how to make major IT and outsourcing projects successful. They change the confines of how you operate project management methodologies such as PRINCE2 –
and how you govern these projects to ensure success.

This session will help you identify:

• How to ensure a constructive partner-relationship with your service provider
• How you change the contracting process for advice from your service provider and the solutions they provide you with
• How to identify whether a change variation should be chargeable or not
• Why PRINCE2 and other project management frameworks can significantly increase your project costs if used in ‘vanilla’ form
• How to change project acceptance criteria to ensure success.
  

Recent research shows that in excess of 70% of IT and outsourcing projects fail outright; but this is rarely due to a lack of project management skills on the part of the client function. It’s often that people are focused on the wrong issues.

Contract Matters: Creating an Effective Legal Framework for Successful IT Investments
Mark Taylor, Partner, Hogan Lovells International LLP

This session will look at the key legal issues which you need to consider when purchasing technology solutions and services, and how to address contract negotiations. Many IT contracts end up offering one (or both parties) inadequate protection. As well as considering key legal issues such as liability caps, service levels/credits and data protection, this session will cover how to put in place a strong yet flexible contract and common pitfalls to avoid.

Grasping for the Holy Grail in Outsourcing: the pros and cons of IT and BP Outsourcing: Realising the Benefits and Avoiding the Pitfalls
Bill Jones and Sally Mewies, Wragge & Co

Cost reduction is a major driver for most outsourcing deals but there are others such as business process transformation. The nature of the drivers determines the nature of the deal, which in turn ought to determine the nature of the contract. While 25% of companies are considering outsourcing as a way of cutting costs in a recession or at best a flat economy, only 33% of companies who have outsourced believe that the deal has been successful.

The tendering process and pre-contractual behaviours often drive the success of an outsourcing project. This session will explore what the parties can do to ensure a successful start and that they sign a contract that is "fit for purpose".

Cloud-Sourcing: The Future of IT Outsourcing
David Greenway, Outsourcing UK Service Management Consultant, Capgemini

Difficult global economic trading conditions have resulted in significant challenges to IT budgets, with CEOs currently more focused on cost control and operational efficiency than business-enabled change. Cloud-sourcing is new outsourcing opportunity for rapidly serving the needs of the business while drastically reducing IT opex and capex costs.

Based on many years providing long-term outsourcing contracts, Capgemini explains how adoption of new sourcing models can deliver significant benefits in cost reduction and operational efficiency. This thought-provoking keynote will provide a pragmatic perspective on successful outsourcing using new cloud-based models, using Capgemini’s extensive experience of governance and service management, service integration and orchestration.