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Conference Sessions

 

Keynote Presentation: Technology is Broken and How to Fix IT

10/1/2008 8:45:00 AM

James Gaskin will explain how Technology Is Broken, and that it may not be your fault. By focusing on four critical areas for businesses, Gaskin shows how to effectively put technology to work in business, and how to choose the right technology for the job at hand. The four discussion areas, laptop and mobility safety, data safety, network safety, and enhanced e-mail value, all follow Gaskin's TPT Rule: Task, Process, Tools. Using dozens of real world examples gathered during years of consulting and writing 17 technology books and thousands of articles, Gaskin balances technical frustration with laughter. Wearing Hawaiian shirts and delivering objective information stripped of marketing hype in his trademark "unbiased and unboring" style, Gaskin explains how to "un-break" your broken technology.

Speakers:

James Gaskin
Author and Columnist


[TOP]

 

Briefing on Social Media

10/1/2008 9:30:00 AM

Join Chris Brogan, social media expert and CrossTech Media's VP of Strategy and Technology, in a lively discussion on the impact of social media technologies on businesses and organizations. Learn which tools require your attention, and understand a few basic strategies to grow your capabilities in this space.

Speakers:

Chris Brogan
Vice President of Strategy and Technology
CrossTech Media

[TOP]

 

SECURITY: UTM: Simple, Elegance and Power

10/1/2008 10:15:00 AM

Modern IT security managers are essentially required to protect against multiple attack vectors while ensuring optimal performance for their organization. This session offers information about Unified Threat Management solution for comprehensive perimeter security. Featuring:

  • Network Security - Firewall, VPN and Intrusion Prevention
  • Web Security - URL Filtering, Malware Detection, Bandwidth Management and Application Control
  • Mail Security - Antispam, Antivirus, Antiphishing and Email Encryption
  • Deployment as hardware, software or virtual appliance

    Astaro Security Gateway provides immediate protection for your network, web access and email traffic. The Astaro solution integrates more security applications than any competitor in one award-winning management device. A complete range of hardware appliances scale to the performance level that you demand.

    Speakers:

    KENT LEE
    SALES ENGINEER
    ASTARO

    [TOP]

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    UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS: Enterprise Wireless - More than just 802.11?

    10/1/2008 10:15:00 AM

    Today's Wireless Enterprise environment can be an alphabet soup of acronyms, air interface standards and sometimes conflicting application requirements covering VHF through microwave. Deployment of a bullet-proof wireless infrastructure requires meticulous planning, careful implementation and regular system maintenance and verification. Is your IT group ready for the challenge? Takeaway points in this session include:

  • How the application drives the radio frequency network design.
  • Do you need more radios or more Engineering?
  • Insights into the latest Converged Wireless Network topologies.

    Speakers:

    Keith Ebel
    President
    Proximity Wireless

    [TOP]

  •  

    VIRTUALIZATION: Extend your Vizion

    10/1/2008 10:15:00 AM

    Safeguard and optimize your virtualized environment as well as extract the maximum return on your investment. In this session you will hear how we can support essential IT strategies, including business continuity, high availability and disaster recovery. Take away these key components necessary to launch your company's achievement for better comprehensive business continuity.

  • Perform entire image or partial differential backups of your virtual machines for fast and easy recoverability
  • Integration and enhancement with VMware features and functionality such as VC, VCB, DRS, HA, and Vmotion
  • A holistic multi-level view of your virtual environment which allows you to spot and handle performance issues before problems arise
  • Host level replication within a virtualized environment to keep your applications running 24/7/365
  • Ability to apply the same great benefits of backup & restore in a virtualized environment to your physical machines

    Speakers:

    Tony MacDonald

    Vizioncore

    [TOP]

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    ENTERPRISE & SOCIAL SOFTWARE: Make Smarter Decisions: Integrate Systems from Shop Floor to Top Floor

    10/1/2008 10:45:00 AM

    Business decision makers rely on enterprise information to make the right decision, and they depend on IT to deliver the right information at the right time. By integrating your business intelligence and process monitoring and control systems, your organization can make smarter decisions. In this session, you will hear how you can provide your business decision makers with actionable, real-time information. Takeaway points include:

  • How to tightly integrate your systems from shop floor to top floor
  • How to mine real-time data to make raw data actionable to all management levels
  • How to find and utilize hidden capacity in your production environment

    Speakers:

    Laurie Cavanaugh
    MES Solutions Provider
    Wonderware Central

    [TOP]

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    ENTERPRISE AND SOCIAL SOFTWARE: Behind and Outside the Firewall

    10/1/2008 10:45:00 AM

    Technology such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogging isn't just for school kids any more. Businesses are paying more and more attention to the enterprise collaboration opportunities these types of software afford, and they are moving quickly into trials and full fledged adoptions of social software. Learn from Chris Brogan what an organization's benefits from adopting this technology will be, where the pitfalls are, and what comes next.

    Speakers:

    Chris Brogan
    Vice President of Strategy and Technology
    CrossTech Media

    [TOP]

     

    ENTERPRISE & SOCIAL SOFTWARE: Email Archiving: Improving Productivity and Meeting Compliance Requirements

    10/1/2008 10:45:00 AM

    Email today contains discussions, agreements, documents, notifications, contact information, and many other kinds of critical business information. By automatically storing email records, your organization can ensure that they are not loosing or misplacing the information they need. In this session you'll hear how to easily and automatically maintain the required records and to search and find specific information. Takeaway points include:

  • Options for eliminating the need to retain large volumes of old emails on your mail server.
  • Details about the government regulations (Sarbannes-Oxley, HIPAA, etc.) that require the retention of and access to email records.
  • How to use a compact network appliance for your archiving needs.

    Speakers:

    Dean Richardson
    Vice President of Sales
    ArcMail Technology

    [TOP]

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    SECURITY: Botnets: Battling the Borg of the Internet

    10/1/2008 11:45:00 AM

    Sure, you've heard of bots and botnets. But have you ever actually seen a bot, bot source code, or a bot herder's Command and Control (C&C) center in action? Now you can. In this presentation, WatchGuard Technologies, uncovers what makes bots tick. The talk covers topics both beginning and advanced:

  • What a "botnet" is
  • What bot source codes looks like and does
  • How bot herders control bots via C&C centers
  • How a crook might recruit an army of bots
  • How to render bots powerless on your network

    During the talk, you'll see the inner workings of some real-world, malicious bots, found in the wild on underground sites. Learn about the many attacks botnets can launch, and how to defend against them. Since the best way to understand these sophisticated attacks is to see them unfold right before your eyes, we will present video captures of bots in action. Once you understand how these evil botnets get built, you'll have the power to avoid assimilation. Resistance is not futile.

    Speakers:

    Terrence Davis
    Senior Sales Engineer
    WatchGuard Technologies

    [TOP]

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    ENTERPRISE & SOCIAL SOFTWARE: Empower your employees and drive business productivity with Microsoft Dynamics

    10/1/2008 11:45:00 AM

  • Can Microsoft Dynamics address specific needs of my business?
  • Improve my financial management capabilities
  • Improve business decisions with advanced Business Intelligence and Reporting
  • Work with familiar software for a seamless user experience
  • Who is Microsoft Dynamics for?

    Speakers:

    Chris Gherardini
    President
    Turnkey Technologies

    [TOP]

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    VIRTUALIZATION: Virtualization in the Datacenter

    10/1/2008 11:45:00 AM

    What is virtualization from server and storage viewpoint? This presentation will focus on how the virtualization layer effects day to day management and deployment of today's data center and will include an open discussion of real world case studies.

  • Overview of storage virtualization
  • Benefits of server virtualization
  • Growth scenarios in a virtualized data center
  • DR enabled by virtualization
  • Data protection considerations

    Speakers:

    Dave Hiechel
    President and CEO
    Eagle Software

    [TOP]

  •  

    Explaining Geeks to Human and the Inverse

    10/1/2008 12:15:00 PM

    Geeks love technology but don't understand non-technical employees. Non-technical employees don't understand technology or geeks. The only common ground for these groups? They both hate the idiot vice presidents who can't communicate to employees from either side of the geek divide.

  • Learn fun facts like how to tell if someone is too stupid to use a computer,
  • what traits say "I'm a geek",
  • how to tell if you're a geek wannabe, a geek or an uber geek,
  • and why HR says there are no good technical people available.

    James Gaskin explains how geeks and non-geeks can work together for the same end results: improving their business and avoiding idiot vice presidents. Along the way geeks and non-geeks will learn how to better communicate and work together. Idiot vice presidents will remain clue-free.

    Speakers:

    James Gaskin
    Author and Columnist


    [TOP]

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    ENTERPRISE & SOCIAL SOFTWARE: RFID vs. Barcode: Which technology provides the best ROI?

    10/1/2008 1:15:00 PM

    This presentation will help business leaders understand the key differences between RFID and barcode technology that will solve business issues and provide the best ROI for your operations. Upgrading to a new inventory control system or implementing a tracking system for assets, products, or people can be a confusing and time consuming endeavor. Understanding which technology is right for your business needs (RFID, barcoding, or some combination of the two) is essential to showing a return on investment for your project.

    This presentation will also outline what the next step is when defining business problems, choosing the right technology solutions for your operational needs, and ensuring a return on investment for your project.

    Speakers:

    Thomas O'Boyle
    Corporate Vice President
    Miles Technologies

    [TOP]

     

    VIRTUALIZATION: VDI: Delivering Virtual Desktops From The Data Center

    10/1/2008 1:15:00 PM

    As companies look for ways to streamline operations, IT organizations are charged with identifying solutions that not only deliver new efficiencies, but do so in the face of stretched staffs and budgets. Likewise, IT is being asked to provide access for an increasingly dispersed and growing audience, such as remote workers in offsite facilities, contractors, and partners. While these stakeholders require the ability to interface with various internal resources, IT must ensure strict adherence to corporate security requirements and new regulatory standards.

    Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) provides a framework for expanding corporate IT control, manageability, and flexibility without increasing cost, while providing end users with a familiar desktop experience. This session will discuss how VDI reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) for a desktop infrastructure, extends hardware lifecycle, and helps IT respond more quickly to business needs. It will also highlight the following efficiencies that VDI enables:

  • Cost; Elimination of duplicate data requires less resources to save and backup information.
  • Business continuity; Consolidated data in the VDI environment is easy to backup, protect, and ultimately replicate in a new location.
  • "Green"; Reduced storage needs result in lower power and cooling requirements.
  • Compliance; Document management ensures observance of internal archiving restrictions and regulatory compliance.
  • PC Lifecycle; Ease of upgrading operating systems and applications remotely extends the life of PCs and peripheral equipment.

    Speakers:

    Greg Werkowitch
    National Consulting Engineer
    Relational Technology Solutions

    [TOP]

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    VIRTUALIZATION: Data Protection - More Complicated Than Ever

    10/1/2008 1:45:00 PM

    Technology advances in the areas of backup and recovery, long-term archiving, and disaster recovery, give today's users a wide and confusing array of choices when it comes to protecting corporate data. This session will help you to understand the choices that are out there, and which ones are best for you. Five Things You Will Learn In This Session:

  • Data Deduplication, what is it, and where does it fit
  • Is tape really 'dead'?
  • Disk for backup - where are the differences
  • Data replication strategies
  • Where is it all headed

    Speakers:

    John Martini
    Territory Sales Manager
    Midwest, Overland Storage

    [TOP]

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    Keynote Presentation: Giving Thanks to Bill Gates: Looking back on 20 years of IT innovation

    10/2/2008 9:15:00 AM

    With Gates' retirement this past summer, it is time to take a humorous look back over his reign. We'll highlight some of the things that Microsoft has done to make us all successful in the IT world. Strom will discuss the fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the desktop, the network, and what lies in store for our computing futures.

    Speakers:

    David Strom
    President
    David Strom, Inc

    [TOP]

     

    ENTERPRISE & SOCIAL SOFTWARE: The False Positive: Anti-Spam's Dirty Little Secret

    10/2/2008 10:15:00 AM

    Before anti-spam, you never asked, "did you get my email?" Spams, viruses and phishing threats forced the use of email filtering systems, software and services. However, these solutions have made email untrusted for their high false positive rates and inconvenient quarantines. They often require extensive, hands-on training by your administrators, as well as your end-users. In this session you'll learn how to block spam AND save your legitimate email from being caught. Takeaway points include:

  • You'll learn how to avoid false positive rates.
  • The significance of SPAM signatures and how an appliance defeats them.
  • The new technology you need to successfully eliminate email threats and still deliver important, business critical emails to your user's inbox.

    Speakers:

    David Troup
    CEO & Founder
    MailFoundry

    [TOP]

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    CLOUD COMPUTING: Effectively Engaging in a Managed Services Solution

    10/2/2008 10:15:00 AM

    In today's fast-paced business world, a reliable network is essential! Your organization cannot afford to have network downtime, device outages, security intrusions, application malfunctions, under-performing equipment, etc. The effects these fault conditions can have on your business are devastating!

    There are so many activities and distractions that can take away from your main focus?your core business strategies. Imagine an IT environment where you had a team of support specialists readily available to you 24x7 and never had to worry about the day-to-day tasks of managing and maintaining a high-performing, reliable network...this type of IT environment can be yours with managed services.

    In this session, you'll hear how to effectively engage in a co-sourced solution, techniques for solid deployment, and the benefits that managed services can bring to your organization.

    Speakers:

    John Phillips

    CBIZ Network Solutions, LLC

    [TOP]

     

    ENTERPRISE & SOCIAL SOFTWARE: Debugging Software - Stop Guessing and Start Knowing

    10/2/2008 10:45:00 AM

    Software has become the backbone of every business system. As software increases in its complexity through integration and through the use of distributable components, most software support techniques in use by businesses have failed to keep up the pace. Instead, they rely on vendor recommendations, uninformed opinions from supposed "experts", and just plain guessing. Imagine--incurring downtime in your busiess to apply a patch that "might" fix the problem. If your business plans on being profitable, then you have to start debugging software to find the root cause of failures. In this session, you will learn how to switch from "guessing" to "debugging". You will learn:

  • How to use diagnostic tools to find data related to software failures.
  • How to turn your support organization into a profit center for your business.
  • How to switch your support organization from a group that guesses into a group that debugs software and learns exactly what the root cause of a failure is.

    Speakers:

    Erick Harlow
    Account Manager
    Forensic IT

    [TOP]

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    UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS: OpenSource Voice

    10/2/2008 10:45:00 AM

    This session will introduce the attendee to the current solutions available in the Open Source Voice market, along with the challenges and advantages involved with their deployment. SIP-based solutions will also be presented and an overview of applicable models.

    Speakers:

    Stephane Alnet
    CTO
    Sotel IP Services

    [TOP]

     

    SECURITY: Laptop Safety Seminar, Part 1

    10/2/2008 11:45:00 AM

    Speakers:

    James Gaskin
    Author and Columnist


    [TOP]

     

    SECURITY: PCI & DSS Compliance: Helping Your Customers Achieve It

    10/2/2008 11:45:00 AM

    While you are probably familiar with PCI & DSS Compliance, do you possess the understanding and know-how to achieve it for your customers?

    In this presentation, WatchGuard Technologies Field Sales Engineer, Terrance Davis uncovers the ins and outs of this often misunderstood regulation. During this presentation, you will learn about:

  • Why PCI & DSS was initially created
  • Common misconceptions related to achieving PCI & DSS Compliance
  • What the actual requirements are and how to address them
  • Implementing a viable network security solution
  • Vulnerability testing & maintenance Join us to expand your understanding of this incredibly hot industry topic and learn how you can increase your existing opportunities and marketability as a knowledgeable network solution provider.

    Speakers:

    Terrence Davis
    Senior Sales Engineer
    WatchGuard Technologies

    [TOP]

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    SECURITY: Laptop Safety Seminar, Part 2

    10/2/2008 12:15:00 PM

    Speakers:

    James Gaskin
    Author and Columnist


    [TOP]

     

    Master Mind Panel and Lunch: Security for Second Circle Technologies

    10/2/2008 1:00:00 PM

    Our panelists will discuss the latest twist on security risks associated with the proliferation of web-based applications, SaaS, Web 2.0, social networking and anything that might impact your network. You'll get detailed information and analysis from a panel of experts who are ready to share the trends and challenges of securing second circle technologies. Light lunch will be provided during this session and you can pick it up at one of our mobile lunch stations on the Expo Floor.

    Speakers:

    David Troup
    CEO & Founder
    MailFoundry

    James Gaskin
    Author and Columnist


    Terrence Davis
    Senior Sales Engineer
    WatchGuard Technologies

    [TOP]

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    Event Details
    Dates:
    Oct. 1 - 2, 2008

    Conference Hours:
    Oct. 1: 8:45 AM - 2:30 PM
    Oct. 2: 8:45 AM - 1:30 PM

    Expo Hours:
    Oct. 1: 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM
    Oct. 2: 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM

    Location:
    America's Center Convention Complex
    701 Convention Plz
    St. Louis, Missouri
    Map | Venue Link