Interop | New York 2014

June 27, 2014

Interop is the leading independent technology conference and expo series designed to inform and inspire the world’s IT community. Through in-depth educational programs, real-world demos, Interop showcases the most powerful innovations and solutions the industry has to offer and provides the forum for the world’s largest celebration of IT professionals. Interop Las Vegas is the flagship event held each spring, with Interop New York held each fall, and annual international events in London, India and Tokyo.

Interop returns to New York with practical and visionary conference sessions designed to help you accelerate your career. This year’s conference tracks include:

Applications

The IT application ecosystem is going through dramatic transformations with the use of cloud computing and mobility. Users expect ever increasing and improving application functionality and are intolerant of disruptions to availability. IT leaders and practitioners have the unique opportunity to dramatically improve their ability to influence and enhance business activities and help their organizations meet their goals and objectives through effective application development, deployment, and management. If they succeed they will be the heroes of the organization; if they fail, end users and business units will go around IT to get what they need.

The Applications Track will address the challenges of application governance, deployment, management, and monitoring – both from a technology and business perspective.

Business of IT

Traditionally, Interop has been about the “interoperability” of technology platforms, networks, and a variety of solutions that together allow IT to operate efficiently. As IT infuses all aspects of modern life and innovation continues at a rapid pace, “Interop” has new connotations–not only does it stand for the interoperability of technologies but also of business and IT, of digital futures advanced by information technology, of marketing and sales working in conjunction with IT leaders. Organizations work when business and IT interoperate.

The Business of IT Track (BOIT) celebrates this new definition of interoperability by bringing you cutting-edge content on the interplay between technology and great business outcomes. BOIT features leaders from a variety of roles in the organization, all of whom converge on the premise that today, IT and the Business are synonymous.

Cloud Connect Summit

The evolution to the cloud-enabled enterprise is well underway, challenging established technology providers and reshaping the role of the CIO and IT organization as we know it. It’s no longer a question of whether cloud is the right strategy, it’s a question of how you will leverage the cloud’s abundance of resources and applications to outmaneuver, out-innovate, and outpace your competition. Cloud Connect Summit offers a unique two-day program developed around “critical cloud decisions” and zeroes in on the most pressing cloud technology, policy, organizational decisions, and debates for the enterprise.

Topics include:

  • In-depth analysis and comparison of the leading cloud stacks
  • The role of IT and CIO leaders in the new service provider model
  • Embracing IT-as-a-Service, Agile IT, and DevOps strategy
  • Open Data / Open Clouds and APIs
  • Managing SaaS and the heterogeneous cloud environment
  • Operational and policy issues for the cloud-enabled enterprise
  • Case studies and models for the cloud-enabled enterprise
  • Cloud-enabling platforms: Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS), cloud brokers, cloud management platforms (CMPs), and cloud identity management

Cloud Connect Summit is geared toward a cross-section of disciplines. Technology stakeholders include: CIO/CTO, architects, senior engineers and IT leaders. Business stakeholders include: business analysts, project/program managers and line of business leaders.

Collaboration

Enterprise communications is evolving from an emphasis on hardware and infrastructure to a focus on applications and integrating the communications function with business productivity applications. This in turn is changing the focus from communications as a standalone functionality, to an emphasis on how the enterprise enables collaboration. The Interop Collaboration track provides grounding in the infrastructure issues that enterprises are dealing with today as part of their legacy environment, but the stronger emphasis is on the collaboration environment that enterprises are migrating toward. Sessions will look at the ways of integrating communications into business processes and enabling collaboration via new media such as video, and new outlets such as social media. Attendees will get a complete view of the challenges and opportunities around the migration from communications to collaboration in the enterprise.

Infrastructure

Networking, data centers and storage are undergoing tremendous change as both access technologies and core infrastructure are shaped by the forces of virtualization, convergence, and cloud. This track will explore the impact of these changes and what they mean for the ways in which we design, build, and operate infrastructure. It will also examine how these changes will affect IT job roles, responsibilities, and professional development.

Mobility

Given the pervasiveness of wireless networks, the proliferation mobile computing and communications devices of all forms, and the fundamental requirement for mobility in all aspects of IT today, it’s no wonder that mobility is now at the core of so many IT strategic plans. Just as everyday life without mobility would be unpleasant at best, enterprises and organizations not optimizing their application of wireless and mobile technologies, products, systems and services are operating at a distinct disadvantage. Access to information and IT resources on an anytime/anywhere basis is key to productivity and business advantage no matter what the mission today.

The Interop New York 2014 Mobility Track brings you the most important, relevant, and valuable information on wireless and mobile in a fast-paced, informative, and accessible format.

Risk Management & Security

Information Risk and Security continue to be top of mind for organizations. High-profile attacks continually demonstrate the capabilities of attackers and our limited ability to defend against them. All is not lost; many organizations have also begun to realize how to work smarter, not harder in their approach to information risk management and security, compliance, and IT governance. They are equipping themselves with the knowledge, resources, and tools to tip the balance of power away from the adversary and back to the defender.

The Risk Management & Information Security Track features both technologies and management practices. The information risk management-focused sessions will target areas including effective governance for BYOD and Social Networking activities and insider threat considerations. The technically focused sessions will discuss key technology advances such as next generation firewalls and emerging concern in traditional technologies.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN)

Software-defined networking promises to bring unprecedented scalability, flexibility and automation to networks around the globe.

SDN will better align the network to applications. These are compelling outcomes for businesses and organizations, which is why SDN is attracting the attention not just of IT, but also CEOs and CFOs.

Implementation options are rapidly expanding. Where OpenFlow led the discussions a year ago, it’s now part of a more comprehensive conversation. We’re now debating the merits of overlays and tunnels like VXLAN, NVGRE, and DOVE, against path controls that include newer technologies like XMPP and trusted techniques like BGP. We’ve gone from controllers to platforms and now have real examples of both proprietary and open source solutions.

Decision points have shifted from “if” to “when” and include a host of choices around “how.” Meanwhile, network architects and engineers have to sift through competing claims over architectures, protocols and pricing models, and decipher a host of new acronyms (OvSDB, anyone?). At the same time, we’re all sorting out what these changes mean to not only for our infrastructures, but our jobs and careers. The question everyone needs to answer is how to make our businesses ready for SDN in the most pragmatic way possible.

Interop’s SDN track will bring much-needed clarity to a market that is seeing its first deployments and beginning to deliver value. We’ll provide essential technology details from independent experts and give attendees access to SDN thought leaders through conference sessions and discussions.

You’ll get the tools you need to sort out what SDN means for you and your future.