Identity Federation: A Tiered Approach to Integrating Authentication in the Enterprise
Federation enables loosely coupled identity management across autonomous business domains and extends the reach of applications. It is now becoming a strategic requirement for most enterprise infrastructures and adoption continues in multiple industries. Because the federation market is still developing, the challenges as well as the potential benefits can be significant.
This workshop provides insight into the results of federation implementations. It will discuss the efforts of OASIS, Liberty Alliance, web access management and platform vendors, with a focus on current capabilities and limitations, and convergence strategies. The workshop will provide information to help you evaluate whether federated identity fits your IT roadmap, as well as when and how to begin your adoption of these solutions.
Synopsis:
WAN Performance Optimization
Data center consolidation, Voice over IP, SAN over WAN, and other new applications are increasing the pressures on enterprise networks. Some of these applications are very sensitive to the amount and type of bandwidth that’s available, but it is sometimes too expensive, or impossible, to obtain WAN links with all of the necessary characteristics. Worse, simply improving one characteristic, such as bandwidth, may have surprisingly little effect on application performance. Redesigning the applications is often impractical, performance suffers, and the network managers are blamed.
This intensive workshop begins with a detailed technical analysis of the performance aspects of relevant protocols and their sensitivity to network characteristics. It then discusses performance optimization techniques, network tuning best practices, and current optimization devices such as advanced compression, data reduction, wide area file services, caching, and protocol acceleration appliances -- all with the goal of improving performance as seen by users while controlling network costs and not modifying the application.
Topics this tutorial will cover include:
Exploiting New Information Management Opportunities
Enterprises now have significant opportunities to consolidate information management systems into more powerful, responsive, and cost-effective infrastructure. With the advent of robust and high-performance XML data and content management in database management systems (DBMSs), it’s possible to have fewer moving parts and redundant information repositories. This workshop explores new enterprise information management opportunities, including trends such as:
Improving the Software Development Process
Once upon a time, you could create software with nothing more than a text editor, file management commands, and a compiler. Not so any longer. Software development has become a very complex process. A little investment in development infrastructure can automate complex processes, reduce time-to-delivery, improve development outcomes, and help avoid the following situations:
Virtual Directory: The Multi-Purpose Identity Tool
Virtual directories enable organizations to implement identity management applications without tackling a major repository project. They enable identity repositories to participate in a SOA and are an important part of the identity services puzzle. We’ll survey the virtual directory market and discuss impacts of recent acquisitions. In the workshop, we’ll identify the sweet spots where virtual directories can reduce deployment time and complexity and discuss areas of potential concern, including caching, availability, performance, and entity relationships. We’ll assess the architectural implications of using a virtual directory to expose a web service via the LDAP protocol. Finally, we’ll step through the installation of a virtual directory to configure multiple back-end repositories, including a relational database and an LDAP directory.
Building iSCSI SANs
Due to the phenomenal growth rate of data, internal direct-attach storage can no longer scale to meet business needs. However, implementing a fiber channel Storage Area Networks (SAN) can be an expensive and time-consuming proposition. With the advent of the iSCSI, SANs are now a more attractive and inexpensive alternative to fibre channel. As data centers expand in space, consume more energy, low-cost infrastructures like iSCSI will play a significant role in the dynamic data center. This workshop will guide SAN administrators in the art of building an iSCSI SAN. The presentation will include an overview of the pieces and parts of an iSCSI SAN and how they fit together to form a viable storage network. This in-depth workshop includes:
Gearheads Guide to the Corner Office
You were hired because you are a guru: an expert in one or more technologies who can craft working solutions with the newest techniques. Suddenly, you find yourself engaged in a budget exercise, or in a meeting sitting across the table from the CIO. Was this in the job description? It is now! In this workshop, members of Burton Group Executive Advisory Program will present practical advice for technologists who need to communicate with executives and business leaders, including:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.