| General Session Topics - Tuesday, 21 October |
| Congress Hall 1 |
Congress Hall 3 |
Congress Hall 2 |
Roma & Vienna |
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SOA Report Card
Topic Details
SOA Report Card
Everyone seems to be doing SOA, but how many organisations are doing it well? Is anyone making a passing grade? Burton Group is conducting intensive research into real-world SOA initiatives to learn what works and what doesn’t, and we’ll present our findings at Catalyst 2008. We’ll also have a number of companies present their personal experiences. This topic will explore the challenges and impediments to SOA success, and discuss options for dealing with them. It will examine the organisational and cultural ramifications of SOA. It will look at business models and metrics. And it will answer the following questions:
- Where do you start?
- How do you identify, model, and describe services?
- Is an ESB a prerequisite?
- What about WS-* versus REST?
- When do you really need to establish governance?
- What changes are required to the organisation, funding models, development practices, etc?
- How do you measure success?
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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Software as a Service (SaaS)
Topic Details
Software as a Service (SaaS)
New financial and architectural realities have promoted SaaS to a first-class application delivery model. Already popular for collaboration and customer relationship management (CRM) applications, SaaS solutions are now available for almost any type of application or functional service. And leading indicators tell us that this market will continue to grow. The SaaS model engenders a number of benefits that can make these solutions preferable to in-house hosted solutions. This topic will discuss the risks and rewards of SaaS, including:
- Quick time-to-value and pay-as-you-use subscription model
- Easy integration derived from their service oriented nature
- Built-in collaboration capabilities (becoming a major differentiating feature)
- Legal realities related to service level agreements, identity and privacy, security, eDiscovery, and regulatory compliance
- The disruptive impact of emerging SaaS solutions from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and IBM
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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Server Virtualisation: Beyond Consolidation
Topic Details
Server Virtualisation: Beyond Consolidation
2008 marks the year of choice in virtualisation solutions for commodity hardware and operating systems. Over the past few years, x86 server-based server virtualisation has spread like wildfire throughout organisations and has enabled a wave of system consolidation in an effort to stem the tide of growing business demands. The next step in server virtualisation is beyond consolidation, where high availability and dynamic systems management enables virtualisation to be the new operating system for the enterprise. However, roadblocks stand in the way, including vendor licensing practices mired in the static unmovable past as well as lack of standards. Movement in these areas will enable the next huge value proposition of the virtualised dynamic enterprise to be realized. Key areas explored include:
- Licensing Practices that Enable Virtualisation
- Virtualisation Mobility, Automation, and Orchestration
- Virtualisation High Availability
- Virtual Machine Monitoring, Detection, and Security
- Charge-back in a Virtual World
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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Storage for the Virtual Data Centre
Topic Details
Storage for the Virtual Data Centre
The dynamic data centre requires the mobility of IT resources that are decoupled from the constraints of physical systems. The integration of server and storage virtualisation enables dynamic resource allocation and movement for both applications and the storage they require. This topic explores what happens when virtual worlds – servers and storage -- collide. Choices in storage virtualisation enabled by lower cost iSCSI Storage Area Networks (SANs), increased choices in Network Attached Storage (NAS), and the improvement in global file systems is paving the way for improved virtual storage support of server virtualisation platforms. However, the lack of standardised storage management interfaces and protocols has slowed the adoption of low-cost, virtualised storage and threatens to create vendor lock-in. Key areas explored include:
- Integration of server virtualisation and storage
- Storage Virtualisation Trends
- File Virtualisation and Global Namespaces
- iSCSI vs. FCoE
- Storage Management Standards
- Storage Technologies Required by the Dynamic Data Centre
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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Identity Market Overview
Topic Details
Identity Market Overview
Details forthcoming.
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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Identity, Society, and Business
Topic Details
Identity, Society, and Business
Identity systems are applicable to a wide range of societal interests, in both public and private sectors. Governments are looking to online identity systems to help control borders, fight crime, and provide government services. Businesses use identity systems to help run businesses efficiently and in accordance with policies and regulatory mandates. To date, the IdM market is almost exclusively a software market, with very few businesses operating identification services for profit. Is there a business model for identity? In this topic, attendees will learn about important new developments that move IdM past a strict command / control model, including:
- Understanding the Identity Oracle as a business model for identity
- How OpenID, user-centric identity, information cards, and Higgins are changing the nature of the IdM market
- How identity and authentication protocols need to evolve in order to create decentralised, social-style architecture for identity
- Why personas are critical to social identity and how they should be implemented
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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Is There a Workable, Internet-Wide Model for Authentication?
Topic Details
Is There a Workable, Internet-Wide Model for Authentication?
The need to authenticate users across domain contexts is reaching a boiling point. Governments need to authenticate citizens, businesses need to recognise partners' employees, and banks need to authenticate legitimate customers. Solutions are everywhere, but each solution is effective only for a limited number of use cases. The industry desperately needs a workable, scalable approach to distributed authentication. Is it possible to build a global authentication standard, or is every attempt doomed to become nothing more than another tactical authentication technology? In this session, attendees will
- Hear recommendations from Burton Group analysts on which authentication technologies and methodologies to deploy
- Hear industry leaders discuss next-generation authentication architecture
- Discuss a workable model for wide-scale, secure federated authentication
- How to enable interoperability across authentication solutions through security token services (STSs) and other means
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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Planning for Pervasive Mobility
Topic Details
Planning for Pervasive Mobility
With wireless from mobile devices now becoming the preferred form of communications and application access for many users, there’s a powerful incentive for developers, product designers and manufacturers, network operators and others allied to the field to push wireless broadband to parity with --- and beyond -- wireline networks and applications. Despite dropped calls, lack of coverage, and the limited bandwidth for data that characterise many current wireless services, mobile broadband communications continue to improve at a rapid pace
This topic area will cover not only the major technologies, systems, services and devices that are enabling wireless LAN and WAN broadband, but perhaps more importantly to most enterprises, the impact of untethered communications on applications, devices, and security. Consumer (employee) choice of wireless devices and services is creating many new management challenges. Planning for pervasive mobility is expected to affect nearly every aspect of enterprise application development and deployment.
- Deploying 802.11”n” WLANs: Are wired access LANs obsolete?
- Enterprise rich mobile applications and development
- Dual-mode handsets and fixed mobile convergence
- New mobile operator services and content
- Securing mobile devices, data, and communications
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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WANs and Telecom: Services and Providers in Transition
Topic Details
WANs and Telecom: Services and Providers in Transition
The specific WAN service choices available to enterprises continue to be affected by disruptive telecoms industry developments, such as carrier megamergers and acquisitions. Many WAN service providers are struggling to support new business models (such as delivering their own video content), but concerns this will lead to “walled gardens” puts pressure on regulators to establish new telecoms public policies promoting ’net neutrality” -- so that enterprise and residential network users will still have the freedom to access competing third-party network applications and content.
New service provider technologies such as IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystems) and 3G/4G wireless, combined with next-generation residential broadband service offerings (such as those based on fiber), are creating new transport and service alternatives for enterprises. Public Internet services are often becoming acceptable substitutes for MPLS, ATM, or frame relay virtual-circuit-oriented services. In the near-term, many enterprises have realized significant value from their WANs from deployment of WAN performance optimisers/accelerators.
- Network operators: Bit haulers vs. content providers?
- Smart vs. Dumb networks: are smart networks dumb?
- Net neutrality and regulatory/public policy update
- Internet substitution for private WANs
- WAN accelerators: dead in 2 years?
- IPv6: (when) is it going to happen?
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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| General Session Topics - Wednesday, 22 October |
| Congress Hall 1 |
Congress Hall 3 |
Congress Hall 2 |
Roma & Vienna |
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Reinventing User Experience with Web 2.0
Topic Details
Reinventing User Experience with Web 2.0
User experience has been widely recognised as a pivotal element in web site design during the last decade, and it’s now a critical enterprise application consideration as well. Individuals accustomed to contextual and communication-extended experiences with consumer-oriented Internet services now seek similar capabilities in their workplaces, and the onus is on IT to deliver. Combined with fundamental changes in productivity applications, the new user experience model will result in the biggest information worker changes in the last twenty years. This topic will explore:
- The influence of consumer-oriented services from vendors such as Facebook and Google on enterprise solutions
- The characteristics of next-generation user experience, including personalisation and contextual communication/collaboration
- User empowerment: self-service and user satisfaction through improved user experience
- Human factors and design considerations
- New user experience-focused platform alternatives including Ajax, Adobe AIR, and Microsoft Silverlight
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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The Business Value of Social Software and Enterprise 2.0
Topic Details
The Business Value of Social Software and Enterprise 2.0
Social software, including blogs, wikis, and tagging/bookmarking systems, are moving from the edge to the centre of the infrastructure model for communication, collaboration, and content management. Rather than simply being a “Facebook for the enterprise,” social software plays a key role in domains ranging from attracting “net-generation workers” to passing on the institutional knowledge of a retiring workforce generation. It has the potential to ultimately make all organisations more productive and responsive. This topic will discuss social software challenges and opportunities, including:
- Where to find business value among the techie-driven Enterprise 2.0 technologies
- Real-world applications of blog, wiki, and tagging technologies
- How social software augments traditional enterprise messaging and collaboration tools
- Organizational blockers and enablers
- Social responsibility and etiquette for effective social software collaboration
- The role of social software in “Web 2.0” and “Enterprise 2.0”
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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Governance in the Global Enterprise: Bringing Together Manageable Metrics, Risk, and Compliance
Topic Details
Governance in the Global Enterprise: Bringing Together Manageable Metrics, Risk, and Compliance
What do over 136 academic studies tell us that we don’t already know? That evidence-based quantitative research is almost always better than qualitative, subjective opinions. Measuring things matters. But metrics are unhelpful if they’re not communicated clearly to the right people. Governance is the process that causes these metrics to be translated into something executives can understand and take action in a timely, accurate way. Unfortunately, the tools for such communication are hot market buzzwords—Governance, Risk, and Compliance management (GRC)—that are broad, ill defined, and drive a large amount of vendor messaging.
These sessions will help codify the challenges in a global security organization, clarify the solutions space, and detail how security metrics must play a critical role:
- What are the Top Ten Strategic Security Metrics?
- What is the market landscape for so-called GRC tools?
- How can risk management and compliance be made into regular business units instead of cost centres?
- How to create a controls structure in a geographically dispersed work environment
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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Conducting Secure Business Over Open Networks
Topic Details
Conducting Secure Business Over Open Networks
For many enterprises the network perimeter firewall is unable to guarantee that only trusted users and traffic are present on the managed network. Network and security vendor attempts to shore up the network with Network Access Control solutions are incomplete and over-hyped. Burton Group experts and customers will propose an overlay architecture approach that shifts defenses to the endpoints, application systems, information systems, and data centres and challenge vendors to justify the value of NAC products and their strategy for building security intelligence into networks.
Topics to be covered include:
- The reasons why a single enterprise perimeter will fail
- Do we really need NAC products?
- How to overlay secure business on untrusted networks
- Learning from NAC projects that failed
- Defending endpoints, applications, information, and data centres
- Burton Group’s architecture for secure networks and secure data centres
- Industry panel to challenge leading network and security vendors on the wisdom of attempts to lock down networks
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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SharePoint: Fixing A Hole Where the Pain Gets In
Topic Details
SharePoint: Fixing A Hole Where the Pain Gets In
Companies that need to collaborate across business boundaries face difficult challenges when using traditional domain-centric collaborative tools. Case in point: SharePoint. For best results, SharePoint requires all users and resources to be part of the same AD forest. Most organisations don't have that luxury. Attendees of this topic will
- Hear first hand from Microsoft and federation vendors how to connect business partners with SharePoint, Exchange, and other collaborative platforms
- Influence vendor roadmaps by providing direct feedback
- Learn about claims-based architecture
- Listen to customer's perspectives on SharePoint deployments to find out what's working well, but also where the remaining holes are and how organisations are filling them
- SharePoint's current and likely future roles in enterprise content and record management
- The SharePoint market competitor/complementor landscape
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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Role Management and Provisioning: The Witches Brew of Compliance
Topic Details
Role Management and Provisioning: The Witches Brew of Compliance
A growing list of IdM tools stake claim to solving the compliance challenge for enterprises, leaving us with the question: how many tools does it take to accomplish the task? Products range from user provisioning to automate account administration, role management for abstracting users and privileges, enterprise applications control management to address intricate policy rules in applications, entitlement management to externalise policy decisions for fine-grained authorisations from applications, and identity audit tools to validate and certify the environment. Is all of this necessary? Are there opportunities to converge technologies? This session will look at the solutions available in this market and push for greater integration, better interoperability, and more convenient packaging. Issues discussed include:
- What improvements can make provisioning systems easier to deploy and integrate with the policy management infrastructure?
- Role management tools are improving, but how can enterprises conduct successful role definition projects?
- How can all the policy and privilege management tools be integrated into a holistic solution?
- When will COTS applications externalize security and identity management?
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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Data Centre Efficiency: Energised, Miniaturised, and Highly Available
Topic Details
Data Centre Efficiency: Energised, Miniaturised, and Highly Available
Data centre expenditures have become top-of-mind for CIOs and IT administrators. Global competition and eCommerce are driving the phenomenal growth of data and systems. As a result, data centres are running out of power and space. Also, a 24x7 operation demands a resilient, dynamic data centre to service the needs of international customers. Energy efficiency, space, and uptime requirements are driving data centre technology advancements including virtualization, server and storage density, and increased availability. Data centres are built with power redundancy, advanced thermal dynamics, and business continuity in mind. Attendees will gain insight into the technological evolution of new hardware designs in blade servers and compute nodes, efficient and resilient facilities infrastructure, and high availability design for business continuity. Key technologies and trends discussed include:
- Energy efficient data centre design
- Energy saving storage techniques
- Miniaturization of data centre systems
- Standards for measuring IT processing efficiency
- Business impact analysis: the keystone to successful continuity solutions
- Disaster avoidance: bypassing the traps
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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New Realities for Data Management
Topic Details
New Realities for Data Management
Data management is undergoing a significant transition, with new database management system (DBMS) capabilities, major advances in XML data management with emerging standards such as XQuery, and pervasive business intelligence and analytics opportunities. Enterprises are also grappling with new data management challenges, such as the massive databases and data streams associated with web sites and sensor networks. This topic explores and explains the new data management realities, including:
- The power and implications of robust XML data and content management in leading DBMSs
- The synergy between SQL and XQuery
- Data warehousing trends and opportunities
- The “one-size-fits-all” database debate, and the expanding roles for specialized, non-traditional XML data management systems
- How data management trends are reshaping business intelligence and analytics
- Comprehensive and coherent data integrity and security strategies
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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| General Session Topics - Thusday, 23 October |
| Congress Hall 1 |
Congress Hall 3 |
Congress Hall 2 |
Roma & Vienna |
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Data Security: More than the Reach of the Breach
Topic Details
Data Security: More than the Reach of the Breach
Staying out of the news (bad news, specifically) is an admirable goal. But data security is more than merely avoiding breaches, disclosures, and reputation blemishes. Enterprises have vast data landscapes with varied needs. In the land of data, those who control data are king. Such control includes protection of data in motion, use, and at rest—to be sure—but it also involves classifying, architecting, and discovering information properly. It also requires appropriate technical responses to conflicting compliance requirements: some of which require greater confidentiality and others that require greater availability.
The session will cover:
- How data protection must evolve in a service-oriented application environment
- How organisations are responding to protection requirements from Payment Card Industry (PCI) and other regulations
- Why enterprises should start thinking strategically about encryption and key management
- What data services and information architecture can do to help reduce risk
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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Unified Communications: Real-time Enterprise Collaboration and Networking
Topic Details
Unified Communications: Real-time Enterprise Collaboration and Networking
Media coverage of unified communications (UC) exploded in 2007. But how are organisations progressing on their journey towards converged real-time communication services, including voice, videoconferencing/telepresence, instant messaging (IM), and presence? Fixed and mobile devices, systems, and services will need to be consolidated, and security issues must be considered.
However, unified communications is much more than just technology consolidation. Undertaking such efforts will have dramatic impacts on organisational roles, responsibilities and structures. Unified communications also has to provide greater business relevancy than simply deploying a fancier phone or IM client. Adapting work practices to better integrate real-time communication within process activities are design and development skills that are not very mature. The evolution of call centres/customer contact centres is also part of the equation. This topic examines the current state of unified communications, challenges impeding adoption, and prospects for success.
- The business case for UC
- New work models enabled by UC
- The impact of rich communicating mobile device proliferation on UC
- UC as the follow-on to the IP-PBXs
- Vendors delivering UC platforms, their strategies, and prospects
- UC security and compliance issues
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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The Infrastructure Services Model: Focus on Identity Services
Topic Details
The Infrastructure Services Model: Focus on Identity Services
The IT industry needs to fulfill the promise of reusable infrastructure services based on applying the principles of SOA and leveraging open standards. Burton Group extends its ISM vision and challenges identity infrastructure vendors to cooperate in building out solutions that interoperate and can be leveraged by enterprise customer SOA-based applications.
Specific areas to be covered include:
- The business value of the Infrastructure Services Model
- Remapping identity infrastructure into services
- Early customer experiences with identity services
- How a policy decision service works and why it’s important
- Industry standards and why more work is needed
- Industry panel on the path to identity services, interoperability challenges, and how to catalyze the industry to get the work done
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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The Information Architecture Renaissance
Topic Details
The Information Architecture Renaissance
A fundamental market transition is taking place among the many software product categories related to enterprise database and content management, addressing databases, documents, files, images, messages, records, and web content. Previously treated as multiple product categories, technology trends and market dynamics are combining to rapidly consolidate information architecture into a new and different architectural model. This topic explores new enterprise content and data life cycle realities, including trends such as:
- The convergence of structured and semi-structured information, with SQL and XQuery
- The influence of hypertext and the Internet information model
- The role of SOA and data services
- E-discovery challenges and opportunities
- Content-related standards such as XML Schema, XQuery, and the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA)
- New opportunities due to the advent of robust XML data model management in database management systems
- Superplatform competition dimensions, especially among IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle
Detailed Sessions For Topics Coming Soon
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