Discussion: Today's CIO is a business leader involved at the board room level providing technology as an integral part of the business solution. This discussion will focus on the role the CIO plays on the leadership team and the positive characteristics that make him/her effective in this role. We will also address how to re-make yourself and staff to meet the challenges of the changing landscape. Many significant opportunities/issues face the CIO daily. What are they and how do we address them? What are some best practices that allow you to be an effective CIO?

Discussion: Join us for a Question and Answer panel discussion with representatives from various organizations to discuss the pitfalls and shortcuts to building, managing and maintaining a quality Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan in todays chaotic world. How have firms found real ways to fund a program? How have organizations managed to keep a DR or BC plan current in the face of ever changing technology and business process? How does acquisition impact a plan?

Discussion: This panel discussion will highlight best practices and lessons learned about CIOs' most critical issues. Subjects to be discussed include: How do I relate to management at the boardroom level? How do I keep the IT organization aligned with business goals? How appropriate are outsourcing and offshoring for our enterprise? How do I manage a virtual organization? How do I ensure that business management has the information they need to optimize corporate performance? What roles should emerging technologies such as service-oriented architecture and software-as-a-service have in our business? This is designed to be an interactive discussion with audience participation. Bring the issues which keep you awake at night for a lively discussion.

Business Problem: Economic forces and accelerating change are driving the need for flexibility and re-use. As the marketplace globalizes, new markets, new workforces, and new competitors are making companies look for ways to adapt more quickly. While business leaders were focused mostly on cost-containment in the past, we're seeing that growth is back at the top of the today's CEO's agenda and that growth demands the flexibility to be more nimble than competitors.
IT Solution: Service Oriented Architecture has the potential to create new opportunities for businesses of all kinds. IT advances such as virtualization and the more widespread use of open standards are giving companies the tools necessary to collaborate and redesign business processes. These elements converge to enable businesses to reshape the way their IT assets create value, enabling them to develop innovative solutions that help deliver new products and services to the market. At the same time, these elements enable businesses to reuse existing assets, which ultimately give them the flexibility to address market demands faster and more efficiently. In a survey of more than 450 CEOs world-wide, revenue growth and increased responsiveness were seen as the most important needs in today's economy. This isn't to say that cost reduction has lost its importance. On the contrary, businesses are looking for ways to make better use of the investments that they already have. In another world-wide survey of CIOs, reuse emerged as a top driving force.

Business Problem:Gartner estimates that 20% to 25% of all software ends up as shelfware!

• How much of the software in your organization is actually shelfware?
• How do you identify and eliminate this underutilized portion of your IT spend?
• What is the potential financial impact to the IT budget?

IT Solution: By reducing the shelfware, an IT organization can free up much needed IT budget dollars. This session will explore how to quantify the savings of Software License Harvesting and the best practices associated with speeding up the ROI.

Business Problem: As the number of remote and mobile workers increases, so does the amount of critical business data being created at the edge of the network. Most organizations tend to ignore this distributed data, leaving that information at risk. Availability and accessibility to critical business data means it needs to be protected and secure for recovery and compliance purposes.
IT Solution: Utilizing Continuous Data Protection such as PC backup and recovery, Server backup and recovery and DataDefense that automatically backup and protect distributed data that resides on devices operated by remote and mobile workers. Server and PC backup and recovery backs up and protects that data so it can be recovered. DataDefense is a multi-layered security application that can automatically encrypt and eliminate data on a laptop or PC if that device is lost or stolen.
Abstract

Discussion: In today’s rapidly changing and confusing information technology labor market, corporate technology leaders are faced with declining new entries into the tech world, baby boomers are aging and technology continues to change radically. This forces the nimble IT leader to focus on developing key employees and keeping them happy and in place. Moderated by the CEO of the region’s leading technology recruiting organization, this panel features senior leaders from three of NE Ohio’s leading organizations offering their views and methods to keep their staffs current, energized and engaged.

Discussion: Often, security discussions focus on a checklist of tactical needs – this expert panel will offer an alternative and take on the topic of truly preparing your organization at a strategic as well as tactical level. Supporting topics will include; data security within the corporate network, identity and access management, strong authentication, identity theft, user awareness, and of course compliance. Come prepared with your top concerns, which will be addressed by a team who will share what you can do to effectively defend your organization in an increasingly insecure world.

Discussion: The relationship between the CIO and CFO is critical in virtually all organizations hoping to achieve or exceed strategic objectives. This panel of CFOs will explore and discuss this relationship and what is necessary for success. They will convey their expectations of the CIO along with what is critical for this relationship to benefit the organization. The panel will be facilitated by a SIM officer and member who is responsible for both IT and financial management in his organization. Time will be set aside for questions from the audience.

Discussion: Demands for increased service and responsiveness, decreasing budgets and the need to maximize the use of physical assets with limited skills are common realities of IT management today. IT Executives must find a way to continue to support their mission-critical workload while developing and delivering new products and services, in most cases, without additional funding for these projects. While at the same time, the business demands increased availabilty of business processes and flexibility to respond to changes in opportunities. Virtualization technology, applied to systems and storage can help to provide a solution for these challenges. This panel of Virtualization thought leaders and practitioners will highlight real-life examples of the use of virtualization technology and answer your questions.

Discussion: Looking into the future we see Pandemics such as Bird Flu and others becoming a factor we must face. First we need to define what consists of a Pandemic and then develop, prepare and test a plan of action. Once the plan of action is established it must be implemented by asking ourselves. Are we prepared to have our workforce quarantined from home and what impact will that have on our daily business operations? How do we deal with the massive overloads at the Hospitals and the strain it will create on our Healthcare systems? Finally what will the short term and long term affects be on business continunity.

One of the more significant features of the CIO Forum and Executive IT Summit is the opportunity to meet with your peers and discuss and explore solutions to common issues. To facilitate this human resource networking capability we have initiated and installed in the Forum's agenda several "Birds of a Feather" quorums. They are facilitated by an experienced professional in the subject matter field.

Discussion: Have you tried to measure or forecast the value of a proposed IT project or your entire IT portfolio? Are you struggling with whether to adopt a new method? Is there reason to believe it actually works? Avoid the pitfalls and identify winning strategies by learning from those who have been there. An impressive panel of IT leaders has come together to discuss how they measure the value of IT and how they justify IT investments by forecasting value. The panel will discuss what methods they've tried, what worked and what didn't.