Workshop details

Developing a Strategy for Enterprise Roles

This workshop will cover how to develop roles for access control and how to evaluate role discovery and role management products. Roles will be examined from an IT perspective, focusing on the use of roles, rules, and policy to manage access rights. The course includes a discussion on experiences, results, and lessons learned from enterprises that have conducted role definition efforts. The workshop will conclude with recommendations on product evaluation and governance. Participants will also learn:

• How to apply popular role discovery techniques
• How to align IT roles to business responsibilities
• How to avoid the pitfalls of definition and management
• How to make roles integral to business management

Workshop details

REST Easy

Awareness of REST (Representational State Transfer) as a simpler and more scalable means of delivering network accessible services continues to rise, as does frustration with the complexity and interoperability issues of the web services framework (WSF). REST is an architectural style for distributed systems that provides constraints on component interaction in order to maximize the scalability and evolvability of networked applications. The most ubiquitous implementation of the REST style is the Web itself. This workshop will provide an explanation of REST and how it compares to SOAP and the WSF. We will discuss the architectural underpinnings of REST:

• Identifiable resources
• A uniform interface
• Resource representations
• Statelessness
• Hypermedia

Workshop details

Social Media: Transforming Work Models and Catalyzing Community Relationships

Social media has become a strategic issue for all organizations. As with any transformation endeavor, there are business challenges (e.g., brand alignment, customer value, and employee adoption) and technology risks (e.g., security, and compliance). Still, social media presents enterprises with tremendous opportunities to deliver products and services that enhance customer, partner and employee relationships. Executive teams are also exploring how social media catalyzes innovation efforts, improves business performance and addresses human capital management efforts (e.g., workforce adaptability, talent initiatives). This workshop will cover the following:

• What can we learn from consumer use of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter)
• Building a business strategy for social media
• Understanding the organizational implications of emergence, communities and social networks
• Deciphering social media technology (e.g., blogs, wikis, tags and bookmarks, social networking, XML feeds)
• Applying social media for external solutions
• Applying social media for internal solutions

Workshop details

SOA: Assesment And Planning

Are you ready for SOA? Where should you start? How will you specify actionable steps that will move your organization away from project silos and towards a service-oriented mindset? What projects will bring you the most benefit? What areas of your organization, architecture, infrastructure, or development practices need the most work? This workshop provides guidance and practical advice to help an organization conduct a successful SOA initiative. Every SOA initiative should start with a self-assessment to gauge the organization’s readiness for SOA and to recognize areas that need improvement, identify opportunities, and establish priorities. Once you know where you are, you can then plan a course to get to where you want to go. The workshop will describe the following tools that can be used to define and guide your SOA initiative:

• SOA maturity model framework
• Assessment surveys
• Recommendation templates
• Sample initiative roadmaps

Workshop details

Unified Communications Trends and Strategic Overview

The proliferation of the term “unified communications”(UC) is increasingly applied to a broad range of communication and collaboration solutions. As a result, discussions related to UC can quickly create confusion and raise many questions within an enterprise IT organization.

This half-day workshop provides a strategic overview of UC and examines the key industry trends that enterprises must consider when developing a UC strategy. The workshop will include an unbiased overview and assessment of several of the broad UC application suites available from leading communication and collaboration vendors as well as a discussion on hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS), and blended service delivery models for UC. The topics this workshop will cover include:

• UC overview
• UC industry trends
• Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft UC strategies
• Hosted and software-as-a-service (SaaS) models
• Migration to UC from IP-PBXs and IM systems

Workshop details

SharePoint and Office 2007: New Enterprise Collaboration/Content Opportunities and Risks

Microsoft SharePoint (composed of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007) is Microsoft's strategic collaboration and content server, and it has major implications -- with both good and bad potential -- for enterprise planning. As the server-side counterpart to Microsoft Office, and encompassing everything from blogs to enterprise content management, SharePoint has the potential to help organizations more effectively collaborate and manage content. If unsuccessfully deployed, however, SharePoint can exacerbate rather than advance enterprise collaboration and content management planning, with the potential for out-of-control content dissemination and explosive growth in unmanaged workspaces. This workshop, a one-day subset of a CCS consulting workshop, covers topics including:

• A SharePoint introduction, including enterprise challenges Microsoft seeks to address with SharePoint 2007
• Detailed analysis of SharePoint capabilities, maturity, and limitations, including identity management
• Deployment and governance considerations
• Competitive landscape projections

Workshop details

Server Virtualization in the Enterprise: From A to Z

This workshop examines server virtualization from the ground up, delving into the technical and organizational elements that drive successful virtualization deployments. Key planning and migration challenges are addressed, with insights and examples regarding how to overcome the most difficult planning and deployment challenges. Organizations are faced with numerous virtualization planning considerations, including hardware platform selection, virtualization platform selection, VM placement, VM migration, storage and SAN integration, as well as data protection and recovery. Attendees will leave this workshop with knowledge of proven approaches toward virtualization success as well as techniques for effectively managing and protecting virtualized resources in enterprise environments. This in-depth workshop covers topics including:

• Evaluation strategies and insight into all major server virtualization platforms, including VMware, Microsoft, XenSource, Virtual Iron, Red Hat, Novell, Sun, and SWsoft
• Methodologies and tools to successfully plan for virtualization migrations
• Methodologies and tools to successfully migrate to a virtualized environment
• Virtual machine data protection and recovery
• High availability in a virtual environment
• Performance tuning and optimization
• Advanced management and scripting

Workshop details

Developing an Enterprise Network Architecture

This workshop teaches the skills IT managers need to develop an enterprise network architecture. Leveraging the Reference Architecture for Networks, the workshop will provide a decision-making framework and methodology for technology selection. The workshop will cover the principles, technical positions and template frameworks Burton Group has developed through its consulting experience with many large enterprises. Attendees will learn valuable technical information and understand how to create network plans that support business initiatives.

Topics this workshop will cover include:

• Network architecture value and benefits
• Network architecture development methodology
• Network architecture framework
• Architectural principles
• Technical positions: Network Protocols, IP addressing, Routing Protocols, QoS, IP Multicast, Switching and Routing, Local Area Networking, WAN/MAN Services, Wireless LANs, Remote Access, Resiliency, IP Telephony, Internet Access, Storage Area Networking, and WAN Performance Optimization
• Architectural templates: large/medium/small sites, campus, WAN/MAN, Internet access
• Creation of Gap analysis and migration plans
• Architecture implementation and review process

Workshop details

Business Continuity: Keeping Business Humming

This workshop explores Business Continuity Planning, Disaster Recovery Planning, High Availability, and examines the latest technologies for building resilient IT systems. Many organizations have stepped up efforts to define or improve resiliency to disasters, however only about 1/4 of organizations have solutions and plans in place in which they have confidence. Key planning, standards, testing, and deployment techniques are addressed, with insights and examples regarding how to overcome the most difficult challenges. Business continuity planning includes ensuring availability and recoverability of the whole IT infrastructure including facilities, power, cooling, servers, and applications. Geo-separated mirrored data center trends are also explored. The latest technologies in virtualization and storage are explored. Attendees will leave this workshop with knowledge of proven approaches toward business continuity planning as well as techniques for effectively designing and deploying technologies in support of business continuity.

This in-depth workshop covers topics including:

• Business Continuity Planning, including business impact analysis, standards and certification standards, testing, and best practices.
• Methodologies and best practices in Data Center design, power and cooling for continuity.
• Methodologies and best practices in networking, replication and failover management
• Approaches to ensuring availability from localized disasters
• Recovery methodologies and best practices
• Virtualizations improvements to business continuity, high availability and disaster recovery
• Storage technology's improvements to business continuity, high availability, and disaster recovery.

Workshop details

Provisioning Deployment: Planning Considerations and Recommended Practices

User and resource provisioning continues to be one of the hottest topics in the identity management space. Regulatory compliance, administrative efficiency, cost savings, and tighter security controls are driving the provisioning market at a rapid pace. Nevertheless, organizations often reset their provisioning strategy—including vendor selection—multiple times before settling on a suitable user provisioning solution. This workshop will help attendees avoid costly failures by discussing enterprise experiences at successful organizations. The workshop will also look at the architectural components of provisioning solutions and help attendees determine which architectural approach is best for their environment. The instructor will discuss evolving trends in technology, project planning, design, and deployment of provisioning solutions. The workshop provide insight into a the following topics:

• Provisioning architectural components
• Business drivers and justification for provisioning deployments
• Provisioning market trends and the impact on your environment
• Tips for establishing an effective governance team
• Recommend best practices for a provisioning deployment

Workshop details

Information-Centric Security: Growing from Leakage Prevention to Discovery and Beyond

Do you cringe when you read about a lost laptop? Are you nervous that your Internet connection might be a giant intellectual-property sieve? Despite widespread regulatory and contractual stipulations for data protection, chances are that you haven't developed a wholly effective architecture for thwarting sensitive information leakage across the organization. Even less likely is that you’ve dovetailed that effort with content management and e-discovery efforts. This tutorial will strive to help fix that. After briefly examining the drivers for information-centric security, the tutorial will walk through a systematic approach to achieving it.

• What are critical non-technical controls that help to keep data confidential?
• What technologies make sense in various infrastructure layers—perimeter, identity & access, point-of-use, and repositories?
• How can information protection align with content management and electronic discovery?
• When should encryption, rights management, network content filters, endpoint agents and other solutions be deployed?

Workshop details

Network and Security Architecture: Designing Security Into the Network

Architecting a network is a complex process. Trying to add security on top of existing or nearly completed network architecture is difficult, time-consuming, frustrating, and ultimately prone to failure. However, if security requirements are included early in the network architecture process, risks can be properly managed. This workshop will discuss the process of designing a network to meet both network and security requirements, reflecting updated Burton Group reference architecture.

Issues this workshop will address include:

• Designing a network for flexibility and protection
• Building in zones and perimeters
• Identifying the proper separation mechanisms
• Meeting the availability requirements using security mechanisms

Workshop details

SOA: Infrastructure Reference Architecture

You’ve been tasked with designing a SOA infrastructure. Where do you start? What infrastructure technology components must be procured? How will you host services? How will you control access to them? How will you manage them and ensure that service-level agreements are met? How will you ensure that services are properly secured and instrumented? This workshop will examine the requirements of a SOA infrastructure from a functional perspective and will discuss the various alternatives available to address those functional requirements. It will provide candid feature/benefit analysis of the various types of products, and discuss methods for upgrading your existing middleware environment.

• Is an ESB a prerequisite for SOA?
• What value does a BPEL engine provide?
• How do you support both SOAP and REST?
• What mechanisms are available to track SLAs and pinpoint failures in the system?
• When is it appropriate to use an XML gateway?
• Is a registry really necessary?
• What aspects of governance aren’t optional?