Many IT leaders are holding back from helping to accelerate business innovation at their firms — even though most believe that IT has a significant role to play. What's the holdup? Most IT shops are caught up in fighting the sludge in IT's engines — improving development and infrastructure operations. And these IT leaders are either afraid or unable to take their organizations into the world of business innovation. But there's no reason to wait to innovate. It's not about budgets but about focus, and IT leaders can take steps to help drive business innovation in their firms if they lay the foundation and help drive the process of innovation. They can:

• Identify the top exec responsible for finding, funding, and rewarding innovation
• Work with business leaders to establish and drive an idea pipeline
• Use technology, training, and planning to enable the business to innovate

Many data centers have become highly distributed and somewhat fragmented. As a result, they are saddled with growing operational challenges which limit their ability to change quickly and support the integration of new types of technologies or to easily scale to power the business as needed. To help address this- companies need to rethink IT service delivery to move beyond today¿s operational constraints to a new data center model. The New Enterprise Data Center considers today¿s and tomorrow¿s IT challenges, like power costs, security and business resiliency, and it changes the economics of computing while providing rapid service provisioning and delivery of IT as a service, when and where it is needed.

• How can you build an infrastructure that supports the innovation required to keep your company competitive in a rapidly changing marketplace?
• How can you leverage new technologies to support the business needs?
• How will cloud computing help you reach Internet-scale?

The second phase of the Internet was first embraced by consumers, as they leveraged Web 2.0 technologies for social networking purposes. Businesses and governments are now beginning to understand and harness the potential for these same technologies to drive productivity, transform business models, and shape global political and economic agendas. This talk will explore the opportunities and challenges of this second phase, including:

• The human challenges of this technology revolution
• How Web 2.0 opportunities may eclipse those offered by Web 1.0
• Which technologies will be most critical in this phase
• The characteristics of successful collaboration strategies

As more rich internet applications (RIAs) migrate to the enterprise, it¿s vitally important that network engineers and security architects work together to optimize application performance and security. This is particularly true for a highly distributed user community where multiple points of access mean that network reliability and security cannot be guaranteed. This challenge is often complicated by reliance on multiple products and management interfaces ¿ sometimes making the cure worse than the disease.

Attend this brief session to learn the four steps to optimizing the performance and security of your network ¿ without the complexity of managing multiple architectures. You¿ll also hear several customer case studies that highlight the value of networking and security synergy.

Please join ASG CEO Arthur Allen, and CTO John Connor, to learn how companies are successfully approaching Business Service Management (BSM) and Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs). ASG will share recently completed market research and feedback from their meetings with over 100 CIOs in how they are successfully demystifying BSM and CMDB. In addition, ASG will be joined by one of their BSM clients in this informative panel discussion. Learn first hand how to make it work for you.

At last year¿s IT Forum, Forrester unveiled Dynamic Business Applications ¿ a new class of applications that are designed for people and built for change, and are built on a combination of SOA, BPM, business rules, the Information Workplace, Web 2.0, and RIAs. But how do you actually do this, in practice? This session takes a look at how early adopters are tackling dynamic business apps ¿ from methodologies and skill sets, to best practices, governance, and change management. By taking an in-depth look at case studies from some of the first Dynamic Business Applications, attendees will learn more about:

• The challenges
• How to overcome them
• How to apply Dynamic Business Applications to innovation

For years, rigid architecture has dictated that organizations change their business processes and that users change their work styles to conform to their enterprise software systems. Software companies called this ¿best practices.¿ But what happens when best practices change? What happens when a product-centric business wants to become a service-centric business? Or new government requirements emerge? Fortunately, IT leaders can now leverage enterprise applications that adapt to changing business needs while personalizing the experience of enterprise users. During his speech, Mr. Hager will share how:

• Business rule-based design environments make enterprise applications more adaptable
• User experiences that leverage Web 2.0 and collaboration technologies can improve adoption and maximize software value

This session will provide you with an overview of Microsoft¿s comprehensive virtualization strategy and product offerings, from the datacenter to the desktop. These include server virtualization (Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager), application virtualization (formerly SoftGrid), presentation virtualization (Terminal Services) and desktop virtualization. See how the System Center management solution integrates both virtualized and physical IT environments, enabling a unified approach to deploying and monitoring enterprise IT solutions.

Microsoft helps organizations increase business productivity with the best clients, servers, and services by helping businesses empower employees and enable IT to maintain control. Services play an important role — and that role is in conjunction with software that you might choose to own, manage, and customize in-house — based on your business requirements. Attendees will learn:

• How Software + Services can enable your IT department to reduce costs, deliver new capabilities and minimize system maintenance
• The relationship between Microsoft¿s Software + Services strategy and other approaches to services on the Web, such as SaaS
• How to empower your developers to create interactive solutions with broad reach and enhanced richness

Setting IT strategy in 100% alignment with the business, harnessing the power of IT to innovate and grow. During her speech, Marta will share her perspective from 30 years trail-blazing in IT at Procter & Gamble. She will focus on:

• The role of IT as a driver of scale
• The power of IT as a strategic enabler of the company¿s innovation agenda
• The steps in creating an integrated, networked Shared Services organization

At Procter and Gamble¿ IT is all about innovation and creating a strong foundation for growth.

Learn about the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack in this "see it all, believe it all", demonstration session. Hear a compelling and comprehensive overview of all 6 MDOP technologies: Application Virtualization, Asset Inventory Services, Advanced Group Policy Management, Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset, Desktop Error Monitoring and introducing Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization.

Today, many companies are hampered by their IT organizations and not empowered by them. IT organizations in those companies spend too much of their time fighting fires and focusing limited resources on the wrong things. By adopting a Business Service Management (BSM) approach to running IT, organizations are able to focus on what matters most, thus freeing up time to add more value to the business and unleash its ability to innovate. Come hear a brief overview of BSM and how to adopt it in your own organization.

Today¿s IT departments are under increasing pressure to create, deliver and maintain flexible and resilient IT services that respond to changing business conditions and withstand any type of downtime. VMware provides the most robust virtualization platform that can deliver on the long-sought automated and agile datacenter, capable of supporting enterprise applications more effectively than physical infrastructure alone. This session will focus on emerging trends in virtualization and how customers can leverage VMware virtualization to create an agile, robust datacenter infrastructure that supports production business-critical applications.

Strategic enterprise software development is shifting from heavyweight processes and infrastructure towards simpler, more lightweight alternatives. The shift is fueled by several important technological and behavioural innovations, such as Web 2.0, REST, dynamic languages, DSLs, small open source stacks, guerilla SOA, social networking, and Agile/Lean methods. These innovations have emerged from informal global networks of passionate, polyskilled workers and polyglot programmers. Businesses that can simulate these conditions for their strategic development initiatives will gain competitive advantage.

One of the most costly errors that large enterprises make is to manage compliance on a regulation-by-regulation basis. This webinar will examine the commonalities among the major laws, regulations and standards and suggest some specific technologies, processes and management strategies that can save a large organization both money and time.

Tonight, Forrester IT Forum attendees will get to experience Las Vegas like a VIP as Tao Asian Bistro opens its doors only to them. One of Las Vegas¿ most exclusive restaurant and club destinations, Tao will transport guests from the City of Sin to the Pacific Rim with lush velvets and silks, waterfalls, and century-old woods and stones, and a hand-carved 20-foot-tall signature Buddha that ¿floats¿ peacefully above an infinity pool.

Come network with your peers as you experience modern Asian cuisine, including a full buffet dinner and exotic cocktails. When dinner is done, join the party on the dance floor as one of Tao¿s top DJs gets everyone up on their feet!

With its eclectic atmosphere, exotic décor, and world-class cuisine, Tao has been a destination for celebrities since it opened its doors; now it¿s your turn to be treated like a VIP!

Publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is on an industry-wide transformative journey from a product-centric to customer-centric business. Partnering with MindTree has helped John Wiley innovate and implement new business models and systems in a global delivery model to accelerate that transformation. This presentation will describe how Wiley¿s recent experiences with off-shoring for key strategic projects, has allowed the Company to punch above its weight and has resulted in winning customers.

Innovation is a hot topic at most companies, but IT is often left out of the discussion. From his dual perspective as CIO of a global top 10 public relations agency and communications strategist for Ketchum¿s technology clients, Mr. Roach will discuss what CIOs must change to get invited to the ¿innovation conversation¿ and how to turn trends like consumer technologies in the workplace and utility computing into innovation drivers. Participants will learn:

• How to build a culture of innovation within IT
• How to juggle operational versus strategic demands to deliver on innovation

As CEOs increasingly look to the CIO to deliver strategic business leadership that drives top-line growth, enabling innovation and collaboration worldwide while maintaining high levels of service are quickly becoming job requirements. The global CIO community at IBM bolsters the culture of innovation across the globally integrated enterprise through a variety of processes, programs, and tools that take innovative ideas from concept to reality. During this session, IBM¿s Mark J. Hennessy will share techniques for enabling innovation that leads to growth:

• Lead with process transformation
• Invest in tools and technologies that connect a global workforce and facilitate collaboration
• Accelerate the innovation cycle to take ideas from concept to prototype to product

IT departments are experiencing increasing pressure to control cost and security, while enabling a productive environment for their users. In this session, Microsoft will discuss how Windows solutions help organizations lower TCO, bolster security, and evolve IT as a strategic asset.

You can now experience the potential of an adaptive infrastructure without overhauling the datacenter, changing organizations or existing processes. Learn how to 1) simplify infrastructure change with unprecedented mobility of physical and virtual servers 2) save administrator time with intuitive management of physical and virtual servers and 3) optimize utilization with dynamic state-of-the-art capacity planning with power management.

According to industry analysts, aligning IT to business priorities and business process improvement are critical value oriented initiatives identified by CIOs. In the last decade, infrastructure complexity and the rising cost of support has caused organizations to seek business value through outsourcing and improving operational processes and infrastructure services. Come hear how CompuCom and Sunoco partnered to break through the ¿ineffectiveness barrier¿, achieving a 46% increase in productivity and creating sustainable value on the road to continuous improvement.

With cyclical fluctuations of the economy making tomorrow¿s climate uncertain, everyone is on the lookout of how to maximize ROI while minimizing costs. While the manufacturing industry adopted and popularized Lean and elimination of wastage as a concept, Wipro Technologies took innovation a step further to revolutionize the way we look at software development. Wipro pioneered the effort of applying Lean principles in software and the results of this have been interesting to say the least.

Could this way of approaching software development be a panacea for the current conditions in the IT world?

As the world continues to shrink, organizations struggle to find their way through the maze of political, economic, social, and cultural issues. As these pressures mount on the enterprise, the effects trickle down to IT. This session will explore how successful CIOs develop and manage a high-performing IT organization in a global environment.

Presenters at this event will talk about how IT at their firms has played a significant role in enabling business innovation ¿ but what is real, what is sustainable, and what is an opportunity that everyone can take advantage of? This panel provides an opportunity to test and validate what others have said throughout the event.

• What specific activities did IT carry out at your firm to help drive business innovation?
• Are business innovation opportunities greater in some industries / firms and than in others?
• How can IT leaders assure that innovation is sustainable?

IT Forum¿s Techno Innovation Demonstrations are your first glimpse at new and alternative technologies that will provide solutions to your current business needs. View innovative products and services that will stretch the boundaries of what you¿d previously thought impossible.

This year, the following products/services will be presented:

• Spigit's IdeaSpigit: Spigit's new platform built to receive and evaluate suggestions, thoughts and recommendations from your company's external communities - Customers, Partners and Prospects.
• VMWare's Site Recovery Manager: This product simplifies the setup of recovery procedures, enables better testing of recovery plans, and automates failover when site failures occur.
• Neartime's Near-Time Connection: This product is an interactive Web 2.0 community collaboration widget.
• Jackbe's Presto Enterprise Mashup Platform: JackBe delivers enterprise mashup software that empowers application developers and users to create, customize and share enterprise mashups for faster decisions and better business results.
• Wipro's iMobileWorker: (co-produced by British Telecommunications plc & Wipro) this product uses multi-agent technology to overcome the constraints imposed by a geographically dispersed workforce and the diversity of hand-held devices in mobile business processes