Don't be confused! IT has no worth on its own — IT's value results from business operations enabled by IT and exists only if the business user sees it. Clear identification, communication, and management of IT's impact on business results increasingly defines the effectiveness of the IT organization's interactions with the other business groups and drives the shift in IT's role from a utility to a partner player in the business. And the understanding and management of technology¿s value will become even more critical as business technology (BT) becomes the dominant technology model. Attendees at this keynote will leave with answers to questions like:

• What does business perceive as IT's value?
• Where does it come from, and how is it measured?
• How does business¿ perception of IT's value drive what IT should do to shape and meet this perception through IT's key processes like service portfolio management and IT demand management?
• Who's doing a good job of creating an understanding of IT's value and using it to manage the business-IT relationship?

The current financial crisis is just the latest in a series of disruptions that highlight the need for new kinds of global systems — from transportation, to healthcare, to energy, to telecommunications and more. Tackling challenges of that scale requires a variety of different platforms — including a mix of operating systems, hardware, middleware and applications — as well as open standards and deep, industry-specific expertise. Bob Moffat, senior vice president and group executive of IBM's Systems and Technology Group, will discuss how enterprises can create a dynamic infrastructure to drive efficiency now and prepare for the new economy.

In these troubled economic times, it is more critical than ever to take a rigorous approach to IT prioritization and investment. At UPS, one of the most critical elements is to ensure that the IT organization is linked to business priorities. As CIO David Barnes says, UPS does not have a technology strategy — it has a business strategy for which technology is the enabler. Mr. Barnes will discuss the UPS approach to IT decision-making, where first and foremost IT must deliver on the No. 1 priority of growing revenues, while also driving efficiencies that deliver cost savings. In this session, you will learn:

• The reasons you need a business strategy, not a technology strategy
• How to use rigorous prioritization to weather good times and bad
• Why the No. 1 priority of information technology should be to help the company grow

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 possible.

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

• OutSystems’ Agile Platform v4.2: OutSystems’ Agile Platform is the first unified solution based on Agile methodologies to address the full life cycle of delivering and managing Web business applications. Companies use the Agile Platform to integrate, assemble, deploy, and manage Lean applications on time and on budget — delivering business value within weeks versus months or years.
• Pegasystems’ Platform-as-a-Service: Pegasystems’ cloud-enabled Platform-as-a-Service allows an organization to securely host and deploy multiple Dynamic Business Applications in minutes, delivering change across the enterprise.
• TIBCO’s ActiveMatrix Platform: TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Grid simplifies heterogeneous SOA by enabling IT organizations to turn their business logic (Java, .NET/VB, C++, Ruby, EJB) into services and graphically assemble, deploy, host, manage, and monitor these services together as composite applications on a single runtime foundation. ActiveMatrix Service Performance Manager provides instant visibility into running services and also allows setup of automatic deployment of extra service instances in order to meet load spikes. It ensures that service-level agreements (SLAs) are not violated during the unexpected peaks.

Mr. Voris will be discussing the National Football League’s (NFL) past, present and future digital media strategy, and the role outsourcing has played in it.

While many of us focus on the current state of the economy, a far bigger issue looms on the horizon. The era of North American and Western European companies competing on the basis of cost advantage is long gone. The era of competing on greater efficiency driven by greater investment in technology is quickly coming to an end. The smartest organizations have already figured out that the greatest opportunity to compete in the new economy will be rooted in the ability to out-innovate and out-design the competition using the energy and unique working ways of the new Millennial generation. The way Millennials interact and drive new ideas forward provides the blueprint for how firms will need to act in the new economy, but this will require a fundamental shift in culture. In this session, learn how IT can play a role in driving that shift.

The economic downturn means that business operations need to be rationalized and made lean and green, all without dropping business capabilities — and no one is better positioned than the CIO to make that happen. The key interrelated trends — service-oriented architecture, business process management, and green computing — are all about optimizing and reusing business processes to provide lower-cost, higher-quality integration across the service or supply chain. This is not future-speak. The CIO of today is at the center of organizational change, and Dr. Soley will share insights and experiences from OMG¿s communities of interest that point that way. By attending this session, you will learn:

• How the CIO and the IT Organization can focus its expertise across the business
• How Business Process Modeling (BPM) enables better support across the supply/service chain
• How optimizing business processes across the company and across dimentions (lean/green) maximizes business capabilities

The Currency Of Business: Improving Application Delivery To Get The Most Out Of Your Existing Network

Information is currency in business and is relayed in applications, yet legacy networks were designed to move packets and lack the content awareness to efficiently transmit applications. This session will explore the technologies that provide application awareness and control to improve delivery across distributed enterprises. Participants in this session will take away the following:

• An understanding of how visibility, acceleration, and security technologies can improve business processes
• Strategies for containing costs on a forward-moving basis

BusinessWeek named the 21st century the “Creativity Century” with ideas as the currency for success. In this new economy, an enterprise depends on its capacity to innovate not only its products and services but also internal processes and systems. In short, a company without a vibrant creative workforce lacks the capability to succeed and must depend on ideas produced elsewhere. Questions that will be answered during this presentation include:

• How does an organization ensure it will succeed in the “Creative Century”?
• What can an enterprise do to innovate its internal processes and systems?
• What role does the IT organization play in enabling organizations’ innovation?

In this industry, we often talk of disruptive technologies, but market conditions have taken the concept of disruption to a whole new level. To cope with and sometimes take advantage of these disruptions, IT organizations need a new approach. Tom Peck will share the approach he is implementing at Levi Strauss — an approach that¿s built on some fundamental, lasting principles: Simplify everything; deliver capabilities, not projects; apply lean and Six Sigma to processes; and reshape your talent mix accordingly.

Case Study: IT Organizational Assessment In The Real World

Forrester’s Organizational Assessment Framework helps clients navigate difficult and sometimes complicated organizational changes. Forrester analyst Marc Cecere will present a case study of how Forrester has helped a client:

• Identify opportunities to maximize value, reduce cost, and drive efficiency
• Prevent costly missteps when driving change
• Integrate industry best practices into their current environment

Stop the Electronic Communications Madness ! — The Case for Recordless Messaging

The cost/risk of creating unnecessary records is too high! Archiving ,records management,EDD,and legal expenses are increasing dramatically. When email was invented nobody could envision e-discovery, the erosion of confidentiality, petabytes of non-record documents being searched. Here’s a look at new technology and policies needed now, in communications and information management!

IT Management Rediscovered

Information has become the lifeblood of organizations, the key to competitive advantage. Paradoxically, it has also become harder to exploit successfully as more people become more dependent on more information to get their jobs done. Information “megatrends” are driving exploding complexity. This technology-driven complexity demands new management technologies and methods — and the reinvention of old ones! In this session, we’ll explore the megatrends, the evolution of the data center, and the technologies that can help you harness evolving complexity.

LifeGift And CompuCom: Partnering To Help Save Lives

In life-threatening situations, LifeGift works to turn tragedies into life-saving opportunities through the gift of organ donation. Recipients depend upon this organization’s ability to match donor characteristics to their individual profiles quickly and without incident. LifeGift partnered with CompuCom to maximize the efficiency and reliability of its IT infrastructure in support of its mission to save individuals — one life at a time. CompuCom’s IT services have become a critical component of LifeGift’s growing success by providing optimized IT infrastructure processes, data protection, and system recovery services. Learn why this partnership has proven to be the right fit — for an organization that saves countless lives. This session will answer the following questions:

• What factors must be considered when infrastructure availability has real-life impact?
• How can vital, time-critical data be kept secure and available in the event of a disaster?
• How do process optimization and infrastructure transformation intersect for maximum IT value to the enterprise?

Driving Innovation & Collaboration with Enterprise Search

All organizations try to drive innovation and collaboration. But most initiatives never get off the ground due to limited resources and cost. What if a solution could effectively drive your business with a low TCO, deployment time less than six months and affect up to 100% of your workforce? The answer is enterprise search. In this session you will learn how:

• To increase global effectiveness by leveraging all existing information
• To tie search into your organization’s top initiatives
• Other organizations are utilizing search to drive innovation and collaboration

Websense, a global leader in Web, email, and data security solutions, doubled in size over a period of two years through organic growth and acquisitions, which led to a number of disparate IT systems, including PRM, CRM, order management, revenue recognition, accounting, call center, and other primary application systems. In this session, learn how Websense used TIBCO to prepare for and complete a major enterprise transformation to realign and integrate IT with its bottom line — all in less than a year. Key takeaways for this session will be:

• How to pump more ROI from existing legacy applications
• Key points to prepare for success in deploying TIBCO

The current economic environment is challenging every IT leader in many ways. Dana Deasy, CIO of BP, will present a view of how these times can be used as a gift to reinvent the role of IT within your organisation. He will share his own experiences at BP, transforming the IT organisation and how he is using the current business climate to further challenge boundaries.

Can cloud computing really save you money in a recession? Not since the early days of the Internet 1.0 have we seen so much hype and confusion over how applications are hosted and delivered. But what exactly is cloud computing? What part of it is real today? Can cloud providers save you money? What are the risks? Should you act now? This Forrester panel will examine the many facets of cloud computing and separate cloud myth from computing reality so you can build a cloud strategy for 2009 and beyond. By attending this session, you will be able to:

• Master the market sectors and workloads of cloud computing
• Catalog cloud computing business benefits and IT risks
• Anchor your cloud computing strategy with facts and clarity
• Understand the cloud computing strategies of the major providers

Today’s economic environment is impacting everyone regardless of the business they are in. We are all being asked to do more with less and to drive strong business results. In this session, Chris Capossela, Senior Vice President Microsoft Business Division, will discuss what it takes to lead a business in today’s economy. He will share best practices and lessons learned by Microsoft customers using productivity solutions as they move to embrace the cloud and other innovative technologies. In this session you will learn how organizations are:

• Maximizing software investments to ensure the highest return in productivity
• Leveraging new and innovative technologies such as collaboration and unified communications software for a positive impact on the bottom line
• Adapting to new business models and ways to work in today’s changing economy

It has been said that tough times don¿t build character; however, tough times do expose character. Challenging times provide a unique opportunity for leadership to accelerate the very change they seek. As the margin for error decreases, the effects of every decision a leader makes are magnified. In this practical presentation, from a leading expert on innovation who has led his own team through challenging times as a director and executive, Gary Heil shares with audiences:

• How to engage employees to help craft the organization¿s future during challenging times and better prepare the organization for economic improvement
• Why leaders act more authentically in times of crisis and how they can make different choices to allow their team to make a better contribution
• Why the values we choose are amplified in times of great challenge. How to craft a strategy with a optimistic attitude, humble heart, and open mind that moves past basic survival and prepares your business for the future