Wednesday
Wednesday 19 October 9:50 AM - 10:20 AM
Pathfinder - Zen and the art of optimisation
Puni Rajah, Research Director
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We often see optimisation as the consequence of deploying better management tools. Not just so. This path begins with good governance and cascades through realistic targets and pervasive communications. As enterprise networks assume an increasingly critical role in assuring business performance, the pressure on network management teams are escalating.In this session, we explore optimisation lessons from Governance Board’s research. We examine typical roles and staffing levels, and how they vary according to history, organisational culture, working practices and skill sets. We illustrate how team composition influences relationships with business unit stakeholders. The ability to engage business managers and users in the infrastructure investment vision, to make changes without drama and to drive success, particularly during turbulence all hinge on quality of these relationships. Finally, we examine successful dashboards and how they incorporate hard and soft indicators to drive effective decision making and execution, and promote healthier relationships.
Wednesday 19 October 10:30 AM - 11:00 AM
Optimised WAN services from Vodafone – the intelligent approach to Networks
Mark Carrington, Sales Manager - Fixed Networks, Vodafone
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How much is too much when it comes to network bandwidth? The cost of Wide area networks continues to fall, however, is that any reason to simply buy as much as you can afford? If the LAN is swamped with traffic from badly behaving users or applications, what chance does your WAN stand, regardless of how big the pipes are?Vodafone has connected tens of thousands of users on wide area networks and in doing so has always sought to provide the best possible experience to them. We do this, not by selling the biggest networks, but by utilising Unified Performance Management from Exinda, in conjunction with the most appropriate connection technology, whether that be fibre or copper based.Vodafone will demonstrate a three phased approach to ensuring the best possible experience for the network users. It starts with Visibility of the traffic on the network at an application level. This ensures that decisions on access capacity are made in the full knowledge of the ability of the network to handle the peaks of traffic and also helps to troubleshoot network events that cause users to cry “the network has crashed” when more often than not it is a failure elsewhere in the infrastructure.The second element is Control, where the administrator of this expensive resource can use the information they now have to prioritise traffic to an application or user level. There is no artificial restriction to this capability as is often the case with network level Class of Service differentiation. Your network is your own to manage, ensuring that those peaks of traffic that previously brought the service to a halt, or severely degraded response times, are now contained within strict boundaries, giving your network a much longer shelf life.The final element, and the one that most are familiar with, is Acceleration. Vodafone believes that this is possibly the least successfully installed element of network performance enhancement. The reason for this is that there is a common misconception that this is a panacea for all network ills and hence many stories of this being deployed with little positive impact. The fact is that only certain applications will benefit from the deployment of an acceleration capability. Vodafone works with its clients to examine the application portfolio and assess the potential benefit of this optional module.Vodafone believes that by deploying WAN Optimsation organisations will finally understand what is happening on their WAN and have the ability to control it for the benefit of all of their users. Join us at the seminar to find out more.
Wednesday 19 October 11:10 AM - 11:40 AM
Blue Sky and Clouds: Trends and Challenges in Business IT Today
David Silke, EMEA Marketing Director, Brocade, Brocade Communications
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Businesses today are being squeezed from every direction, but information is still the life-blood of modern commerce and access to information means everything. In challenging economic times, budgets are stretched, but management teams still expect optimum output, and this is placing a huge burden on IT departments to innovate and meet business needs. The data centre is at the heart of this innovation, and rightly so – it is the heart and lungs of business in the 21st Century.
Wednesday 19 October 11:50 AM - 12:20 PM
Robert Smith, COO, Intergence Systems
Dave Page, Co-Founder and CEO, Actual Experience
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As your systems grow increasingly complex and virtualised, the ability to aggregate and visualise IT management data and see it all in context becomes paramount. Find out how 3D visualisation can allow you to make faster, better informed decisions, based on insight.
Wednesday 19 October 12:30 PM - 1:00 PM
The End of Client-Server Networks: Where Do We Go From Here?
Roger Hockaday, Director of Marketing, Aruba Networks
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The end of the client–server network has been signalled; Cloud Computing, BYOD, Smartphones, iPads. Networking is longer about connecting a desk-bound user to a basement-bound server. The Mobility Paradigm requires us to connect users to corporate data resources unbound by location, no matter what client they use, yet do it seamlessly and securely.This presentation will explore how the client-server model has led to siloed networks, adding cost and complexity to the IT operation, and will propose alternate architectures that meet the needs of today’s worker, wherever they may work or roam.
Wednesday 19 October 1:10 PM - 1:40 PM
Network optimisation as the first step towards cloud
Richard Blanford , Managing Director, Fordway Solutions
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The IT infrastructure within most organisation is unnecessarily complex, the result of successive business decisions taken over many years which limits performance, scalability and the ability to adopt to meet changing business requirements.
Wednesday 19 October 1:50 PM - 2:20 PM
Network Optimisation – be careful what you ask for?
Jeff Smith , Senior Director Connectivity Services, EMEA, Level 3, formerly Global Crossing
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• We give examples of the typical renewal process and outputs• What are the limitations of the usual methodology and how to overcome them• Opportunities to transform the conversation – getting results• Technology v Financial v Application – the drivers and challenges• A positive outcome should look like this...
Wednesday 19 October 2:30 PM - 3:00 PM
Stop Wasting Your Time with Application Acceleration
Andrew Gardner, UK & Ireland Regional Manager, Silver Peak Systems Limited
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We all want to speed up the performance of business critical applications over the WAN. But, is it realistic to do this one application at a time? Is there a more scalable approach for optimizing enterprise traffic that is application agnostic, version agnostic, and protocol agnostic? This session will identify the top challenges that affect application performance across the WAN and discuss how they can be solved using common network optimization techniques. In addition, it will provide specific examples of where network optimization is being used to enable strategic IT initiative, like disaster recovery, cloud, data center consolidation, and virtualization.
Wednesday 19 October 3:10 PM - 3:40 PM
Architect, implement & manage IT infrastructure for optimal performance
Paul Griffiths, Global Consulting Engineer, Riverbed
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Discover how Riverbed enables organisations to intelligently implement strategic initiatives such as virtualisation, consolidation, cloud computing and disaster recovery without compromising performance. By giving organisations the platform they need to understand, optimise and consolidate their IT, you can build a dynamic IT architecture that aligns with ever-changing business needs.
If it is not virtual it is not cool appears to be the latest trend and that is before you even think about how lame it is not to have a smart phone or tablet. In this session we will examine the end to end network issues involved in keeping up with technology. Extended Overview: At a conference last week I was struck by the total lack of laptop PCs. Last year it was a sea of flipped up screens but this year it was all tablets and smart phones. As I networked with colleagues each one showed me their latest favourite app while the IT guys showed off the new VDI implementation. I met a networking guy quietly sobbing in the corner he relayed his worries over security, over network access and datacentre capacity. He and I discussed the issues and some ideas on how to resolve them. In the session "Virtual Reality Check" I will share some of the thoughts from that meeting.
