Keynote by Steve Andriole | Listen Now

The 5 Essential Habits of Appropriately Paranoid Business Technology Strategists

There are five things that everyone had better do over the next 12 – 18 months:

1. Rethink and (re-) develop your overall business technology strategies
2. Redesign and redeploy your computing and communications architectures
3. Rethink and re-implement your technology delivery strategies
4. Re-organize your technology organizations with special attention to business technology skills gaps
5. Identify and implement meaningful and measurable technology performance metrics

These five areas define the decisions that must be made as the business technology field fundamentally changes from the world we understood just five years ago. Is there some urgency here? Absolutely, because the nature of the changes we’ve been tracking is so profound that a misstep here could cost a great deal of time, effort and money. These are sea-changing decisions that can make or break a company as it maneuvers through an increasingly volatile business climate. The pressure to get these decisions right is huge. Business executives, technology vendors, consultants and people in the trenches who support our elaborate infrastructures and architectures understand that the role of technology is growing but that the challenges around the cost-effective acquisition, deployment and support of technology are shifting — and becoming more lethal as mistakes threaten corporate agility and competitiveness.

90-minute keynote is followed by a 90-minute panel debate featuring Steve Andriole, Bob Benson, Aaron Weis

Lunch Break

SaaS - How the Cloud Computing Environment Can Work for You

According to a recent Cutter survey, the number one benefit SaaS users enjoy is lowered infrastructure costs. But that's not all. Whether your organization is part of the 63% already employing SaaS, or part of the 28% considering it, in this session you'll glean ideas for making SaaS work even harder for your enterprise. In this lunchtime discussion, Jeff Kaplan will offer advice on what kinds of enterprise applications (in addition to the oft-discussed CRM, SFA, and other front-office end-user apps) you can leverage. You'll discover the growing assortment of industry-specific SaaS vendors; learn about the vast array of reconfiguration capabilities that some vendors are offering so users can modify the look and feel of their on-demand applications; and get tips on negotiating (or renegotiating) your SaaS contracts with extremely advantageous terms. This session will give you a nuts-and-bolts perspective on maximizing the value you get from your on-demand applications. And if your organization is one of those remaining 9% of companies that are not considering SaaS, this session might even convince you that now's the time to take a look at this increasingly mainstream offering!

Information Security: Zeroing In on a Moving Target

Crime and fraud on the Internet, once pitched mainly toward individuals, now represent significant and increasing risk to organizations with a digital presence. The risk is aggravated by such factors as personal use of corporate computers, loss of laptops, insecure wireless networks, indefinite retention of personal information, poorly thought-out backup and archiving measures, and offshoring. Add to this the current pressure to cut budgets and we’ve got a perfect storm. In this keynote session, Cutter Fellow Mark Seiden, a high-profile security expert — well-known for his pursuit of Kevin Mitnick and revealing the vulnerabilities in airport security systems — will provide you with tales of the latest security holes, scams, and threats and advice on how to prevent getting caught in the traps. Consider these stories Mark Seiden recently wrote about:

• Signature-based malware detection is mostly bankrupt, as malware is now weeks ahead of the signature files detecting them, and some malware is so ...
• A common scam is to overpay "in error" by a thousand dollars using what appears to be an authentic but forged financial instrument. The scammer asks you to ...
• ...recently sentenced to 18 months in prison after sending a NASA employee whom he met on Singlesnet.com a "picture" of himself with a commercially available malware decoder, which she then loaded onto her NASA computer. During the two weeks before NASA IT security noticed ...

In this highly unusual keynote session, Mark Seiden will reveal an up-to-the-minute look at what’s happening out there right now and prod you to think about what your organization’s defense should look like and what offensive measures you can take. » Full description

90-minute keynote is followed by a 90-minute panel debate featuring Mark Seiden, David Saul, Tommy Ward, and Lee Warren.