Surveys by industry analysts have found that three out of four IT departments have implemented or are planning to implement virtualization.  An additional analyst survey found that of those that are currently using virtualization, 45 percent of new server deployments within the new year will be virtualized.

 Virtualization of IT infrastructure and applications promises the following benefits:

• Business needs can be prioritized

• Service levels can be improved

• Equipment can be maintained with less effect on the availability/functionality of applications

• Consolidation servers and storage

• Offering a logical, rather than physical, view of consolidation of computing and data, allowing IT to replicate or relocate workloads from one virtual environment to another

• Cost savings

 

But what is it, how does it work and what are the real benefits and pitfalls to watch out for?

This conference is designed for:  Enterprise IT professionals who are trying to understand how virtualization can help their organization as well as individuals who are learning how to refine their current virtualization implementation.

 

Who Should Attend:

CIOs/IT Directors
Network Managers/Engineers
Storage Managers/Engineers/Architects
Desktop/Server Professionals

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Conference Program:

 

8:00am - 9:00am - Registration and Continental Breakfast

 

9:00am - 10:00am

Samuelson

How to Capitalize on the Tangible IT & Business Benefits of Virtualization

Mark Samuelson, Consultant, Optimus Solutions

 

Virtualization makes many promises to enterprise IT departments.  At the same time IT departments are under constant pressure to better utilize the investments they have made in their infrastructures. How do you make sure your organization takes advantage of all the business and IT benefits of virtualization?

 

In this session attendees will learn:

• Where we are today in terms of tangible, recognizable benefits that IT departments can actually achieve

• Where virtualization is headed in terms of new services that can be offered to the organization

• How to calculate ROI in terms of savings, increased productivity and new services

• How to articulate the business benefits to management and the ROI

 

10:00am - 10:30am - Refreshment Break

 

10:30am - 11:30am

Zylowski

How to Develop Your Framework: The Four Key Types of Virtualization

Robert Zylowski, Director, Virtualization Consulting, GlassHouse Technologies

 

Virtualization can mean different things to different people.  The key is first understanding your scenario and business applications and how virtualization can help you.  Do you need to virtualize everything or just certain components?  What makes sense for your organization?

 

In this session attendees will lean how these pieces fit together…

 

• Desktop

• Application

• Server

• Storage

 

…and how to create a framework that benefits your specific organization.

 

11:30am - 12:30pm 

How to Leverage Virtualization to Deliver Quality Applications to the Enterprise
Eric Lotter, Systems Engineer, Surgient

As you make decisions about virtualizing your environment, you should also think about the ramifications virtualization will have on the way that application changes are developed and tested.

Areas that will be covered in this presentation include:

* Operational Challenges of Enterprise Application Change
* Getting Started with Virtualization
* Virtualization Management Approaches
* Avoiding Management Pitfalls
* A New Approach - Virtual Labs
* Architecting a Centralized Lab

Attendees will walk away with a solid grasp of ‘How to Get this Done!’

 

12:30pm - 1:30pm - Luncheon

 

1:30pm - 2:30pm

Grim

Just Because You're Virtual Doesn't Make You Immune: Best Practices for Security and Management in a Virtual World

Chris Grim, Director Technical Services, Kace

While virtualization can significantly reduce the costs of running and maintaining your Windows environment, these machines are still vulnerable to many of the same threats that physical machines face every day.  While less susceptible to inbound threats, as active network citizens, virtual hosts are just as open to system security exploits as any physical machine requiring them to be secured and managed in a similar manner.  Sound strategy includes vulnerability assessment, patch management, virus scanning, and policy enforcement to ensure that they do not become a liability on your network.  

This session will cover the challenges, risks, and best practices for managing the security of your
virtualized environment.  This session will also include a real world case study illustrating these practices.

 

2:30pm - 3:00pm - Refreshment Break

 

3:00pm - 4:00pm 

How to Enable High Availability (HA) in a Virtual Environment

Mark Farrant, Sr. Solution Consultant, Meridian IT, Inc.

Farrant

 

Many claim that there are inherent advantages in utilizing virtualization in a disaster recovery environment.  But what are they and is there a trade-off between increased potential security threats versus a more efficient Highly Available environment?

 

In this session attendees will learn:

 

• How effective a test bed environment is with the involvement of virtualization

• How frequently should a High Availability plan be tested

• Can money be conserved in a testing environment and does this outweigh the investment in virtualization technologies?

• Is there personnel savings of time and money in this environment?

 

4:00pm - 5:00pm

Luna Shi O'Malley McKeown

Enterprise IT Experiences: How Enterprises are Enabling Greater Efficiencies and Uncovering New Opportunities (panel discussion)
Moderator: Jesse Luna, Leader, Virtualization Consulting Practice, Acxiom
Panelists: Joshua Shi, Security Architect, TransUnion

Pat O'Malley, International Technology Consultant & Enterprise Architect, Hewitt Associates,

Rob McKeown, ZFS North America VMware Team Lead, Distributed Systems Architect, Zurich North America,

Bill Bauling, Data Center Manager, United Center,

Jeremy Humke, Manager-Server Administration, Playboy Enterprises, Inc.

 

In this session attendees will learn from a panel of enterprise IT departments as to the exact benefits they have achieved with virtualization.  Content that will be covered includes:

• IT and Business efficiencies that have been gained

• Services that have been launched

• ROI examples

• Unique uses of virtualization

 

 

 

 

 

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What You Will Learn

 

In this one day conference we will cut through the clutter and hype and provide enterprise IT professionals with in-depth information on:

• Understanding the different definitions of virtualization and what they mean to your organization

• What are the real versus promised benefits

• How to leverage virtualization for the extended enterprise

• How to understand the different approaches to server, storage and application virtualization

• How to implement an assessment of virtualization readiness

• How to put your plan in action

• How to avoid pitfalls in planning and implementation

 

 

Conference price: $199 per person.