Discussion: Enterprises today are facing the “perfect storm” – unprecedented market changes led by dramatic macroeconomic, competitive, business and technology trends; increasing regulatory requirements; rising customer expectations; and growing demand from next generation workers for new IT capabilities. The way in which organizations respond to these dynamics will determine who wins and loses in any given industry.

In his opening keynote address, Rob Lloyd will discuss the disruptive trends transforming the enterprise landscape, the implications of these trends, and the role of the network in enabling new forms of collaboration and customer engagement in this new era of enterprise opportunity.

Business Problem: Companies are looking for ways to simplify their IT, fully leverage their existing computing investments and respond faster to changing business demands. Business continuity planning is critical to managing risks in a successful business. Studies show that between 60 and 90% of companies that don't have a proactive disaster plan find themselves out of business within 24 months of experiencing a major disaster. The average cost to a company in a disaster situation is $380,000 for every hour of down time.

IT Solution: To safeguard against such a financial catastrophe, a comprehensive business-continuity strategy typically includes various disaster-prevention methodologies, hot sites, data backups and a detailed plan of action for disaster situations. One of the best ways to reduce the cost of business continuity strategies for mid-size to large enterprises is setting up a virtual infrastructure to safeguard your most critical applications.

Discussion: The PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) is hailed as one of the most specific privacy guidelines for protecting the sensitive information held by corporations that store, process or transmit cardholder data. However, to fully comply with PCI 12 multi-faceted requirements, companies need to implement strategies and technologies to ensure that effective privacy safeguards are in place. Join this interactive panel discussion on how companies are addressing PCI requirements, and learn about solutions that support compliance initiatives to include:

• Understanding how safeguarding customer data protects a company's bottom line
• Assessing the impact of PCI requirements on retailers, merchants, banks, and other affected corporations
• Overcoming the fears associated with implementing technologies to become/remain compliant with PCI
• Discovering how PCI compliance can be leveraged to reduce costs and improve operational efficiency

Discussion: At 2:39am on January 6, 2005, a train derailed resulting in the rupture of a chlorine tanker within feet of his company's IT department. In this compelling presentation, Barry will not only relate the details of the actual disaster; he will also share the impact that this tragic event had on the company and the IT department.
You must hear how they recovered from the entire loss of the IT building and the lessons learned in the process. In addition, Barry will explain how he emerged from this disaster with a new perspective on disaster planning and business continuity.

Discusion:

• What are the key characteristics of a successful CIO
• Changes in the role of IT in the company – the future & what skills are required of IT people
• What qualities do women have that make them well suited to a role in IT? As an IT leader?
• How to juggle career and family – tips and tools
• Why is networking important – especially for women
• Discuss value of affinity groups or women’s networking groups
• Opportunity for women to give back to the community and finding the time

Business Problem: Realizing the maximum value from your IT investments
IT Solution: Realizing measurable benefits from IT investments is more important than ever. An effective implementation of Business Intelligence is one of the highest ROI projects a company can implement. Through an effective BI implementation, your IT data can provide vital business intelligence to improve business decisions.

Discussion: Business Intelligence is one of the highest priorities in both management and executive minds. Is your current Business Intelligence solution meeting your organization’s strategic needs now and in the future? Come hear how to measure BI success through proven metrics and learn about key BI trends like Information Governance and Business Performance Management. Join the BI community for this important discussion and take away valuable information that can be applied to your current BI/DW efforts.

Discussion: An informal and interactive discussion with today’s search industry leaders. Find out: what they hear from prospective clients, what skills are needed to be successful, why do CIOs loose their jobs, what are prospective employers looking for, how do you get on their radar screens, which resumes get their attention, what is the future state of the CIO. This is your chance to hear it from the experts.

Discussion: Presidio, a leading Technology Infrastructure Integration company, will lead a panel of CIOs from area companies focused on the next wave of cost reducing technologies available from leading vendors. Discussion areas will include: Server Virtualization to improve Quality of Service, Availability and Business Continuance. Storage Centralization to simplify the management of data and match the storage type/protocol to the application and data value. New alternatives to tape will also be discussed as a means to reduce cost while significantly improving backup and recovery times. Unified Communications to improve productivity through convergence of voice, data and video over IP.

Discussion: With every release of a new operating system, we hear “this latest version boasts bold new features that promise to help your organization gain more control over the desktop.” Is it true this time? Will Vista really allow your company to take control of the desktop? Sift through the Vista hype and understand the keys to success in taking control of your desktop infrastructure. Hear how organizations are successfully managing the transition to achieve better control, less complexity, lower costs, and better security-all in an effort to make employees more productive. Let’s take a look at the cause and effect of migrating to a new desktop operating system. Is the expense worth the return? Will it make our organization more productive and lower management costs? Join us as we discuss ways to truly lower desktop deployment and desktop lifecycle management costs.

Discussion: Will provide a background of online carding portals, and will focus primarily on the emergence of volume traffic in online accounts; the malware infrastructure; criminal ancillary services and professionalization; and general points on the global trade of stolen financial data.

Discussion: How IT managers can:

• Drive better adoption of performance improvement processes.
• Establish the infrastructure for a cultural shift to an organization wide mindset of performance improvement.
• Enable business executives to drive accountability and alignment, across and up-and-down, the organization.
• Enable information workers to monitor, analyze, and plan activities consistent with corporate performance goals.

Discussion: Last year we kicked off an interactive session on Best Practices and Benchmarking. We’re here to do it again this year, but this time we will focus on best practices as it relates to IT Strategic Planning.

Recently IT Research organizations and technology vendors have become vocal on research results and survey work around the role of IT Leadership (CIO/CTO/etc.) in relationship to business value and competitiveness. Findings from Gartner, Forrester, IBM Global, etc. indicate that satisfaction with IT senior leadership on operational delivery has risen. . However, on the subject of contributing to Business Strategy, CEO feedback has been blunt and direct. There exits a top management impression that IT can do more to enable process and contribute to competitive advantage.

We know that IT leadership has insight into processes, to business performance information, to employee skill potential and to external research and knowledge of competitor strengths that rarely surfaces in business strategic planning.
Help us explore approaches to reaching out to the CEO and other business leaders charged with Strategic Planning. Today, drivers that prompt planning are many – mergers, leadership change, regulatory mandates, competition, expanding overseas business, etc. These are “levers” that IT leadership can use to jumpstart strategic thinking.

Join us in sharing your experiences on earning IT’s rightful place at the “Executive TABLE”.