In a bleak market, virtualization is one of the few bright points. Server virtualization now offers better HA and disaster recovery at lower price points than has ever been achievable before. Desktop virtualization transforms how workspaces are provisioned, maintained and replaced – even how they are imagined. And without virtualization, of course, there is no cloud. This presentation will bring you up to date on the state of the art in virtualization technology and the best practices in the field.

Could computing continues to capture a great deal of media attention. Although the industry appears to be slowly moving in the direction of a uniform definition of the catchphrase, suppliers are doing their best to brand anything related to Web-based applications as being 'cloud computing.' How do The 451 Group and Tier1 Research define the term? What's required to be cloud computing, and what is only fog? Does this concept represent something new in the world of information technologies, or is it a continuation of existing trends? Who is going to fly in the clouds first, and who is likely to stay on the ground for the time being? Analysts from The 451 Group will answer these and other questions during the analyst panel.

Low-latency trading is one of the highest-priority initiatives for most financial firms. How much latency is too much when millions of dollars are at stake? What are some real-world datacenter and network strategies that can reduce latency and save money at the same time? Join two top analysts from different sides of the market – one from the low-latency datacenter provider sector, the other from the financial low-latency space, as they discuss and debate the issue of latency.

As mobile applications continue to drive new levels of productivity, enterprises need to balance monitoring and empowering their mobile users. We look at where the explosive growth in mobile applications will take enterprises over the next 18-24 months, and how they can prepare.

Can open source really help enterprises cut costs and ride out the economic storm? What has been the impact of current conditions on open source adoption? How is this being reflected in the business strategies of vendors – both open source specialists and traditional proprietary vendors?

Against a backdrop of one of the most difficult economic environments in years, join us to hear top dealmakers talk about what works and what doesn't in M&A right now. Our panelists – from both the buy side and sell side – will look at strategies covering the full acquisition process, from bridging initial valuation gaps to working through integration challenges that are compounded by the ongoing recession.

The Journey From Physical to Virtualized to Cloud (PVC) Infrastructure is an Inevitability. Early adopters characterize cloud computing as a logical endpoint for a collection of activities – among them grids, virtualization, automation and utility models. End users who are not yet doing cloud computing are doing diligence on it. Cloud computing addresses key CxO concerns: deferring and avoiding costs; fixing the IT bottleneck; mapping supply and demand more effectively; providing better flexibility and agility; and de-capitalizing IT. What is the route? Build, buy – or both?
This panel will discuss:

* Who is moving to clouds and why
* Which applications are being moved now, and which will be moved in future
* How success is understood and measured
* Drivers, inhibitors and benefits
* Best practices in deployment
* How users can get from where they are today to clouds, and what tools have been used
* Enterprise use cases and models in the context of The 451 Group’s Cloud Codex"

E-discovery is a market without a lot of discretionary spending – legal events and investigations occur, and require that organizations produce relevant electronic information, no matter the difficulties or costs. This fact has driven lots of vendors from various sectors to the e-discovery (also known as e-disclosure) market: it is driving business in the archiving, enterprise content management and enterprise search markets, as organizations want to figure out how to better prepare for litigation before it occurs. "

The economy is shrinking, but data is growing. Almost universally, storage vendors claim they can help IT 'do more with less' by squeezing more value out of storage assets to meet rampant data growth and stiffer retention criteria. This presentation will examine how three key trends in storage innovation – optimization, unification and the cloud – are helping some storage vendors thrive in this uncertain climate. The session will conclude with a vendor panel discussion.

We are at the tail end of a prosperous, two-decade-long run that saw hobbyists like John McAfee and Peter Norton become billionaires by providing tools to spot and remove computer viruses, worms and other nastiness. However, the next two decades promise to be radically different than the last two. A flood of sophisticated malware is outpacing security researchers even as the adoption of client virtualization and cloud-based computing casts a shadow over the existing model for endpoint security: client-server software paired with (lucrative) subscription-based signature updates. What technology (or combination of technologies) will serve the needs of tomorrow's enterprise? This panel discussion with leading thinkers on the topic of endpoint security will try to answer that and other tough questions.

Managed hosting providers are rapidly raising their 'cloud' play. And as they move toward the horizon, they find themselves bumping into the cloud specialists. This is leading to a separation of competencies and specializations that will ultimately determine the winners and losers – depending on who best leverages the opportunities that arise out of such conflict. But the winners can only get there with the help of technology-enablers that assist them in defining the path they want to take. Those paths are also being shaped by a greater realization of the kind of services that customers expect from cloud providers – producing a variation of services along the cloud spectrum. These new services and monetization strategies, and the associated needs of cloud providers, will be discussed by some of the key service providers. The discussion will also cover the approach that vendors should take when selling into the managed hosting and cloud provider worlds.

In this presentation, 451 Eco-Efficient IT Research Director Andy Lawrence will discuss the concept of energy-aware computing, and how it will be implemented in enterprises and datacenters over the coming years. He will examine how the notion of 'energy awareness' will become pervasive in all models of computing, including the delivery of cloud services. He will also discuss where commercial opportunities and innovation opportunities lie.