Interop: Four Shows In One

Interop visitors will have access to four shows in one this year, with a wide range of information and exhibits on networking, wireless, IP telephony, unified communications, and outsourcing.

Interop New York will take place simultaneously with the Mobile Business Expo, VoiceCon, and OutsourceWorld at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center next week. More than 200 companies will exhibit IT solutions.

In addition to more than 20 sponsored panels, the event will include general sessions focusing on topics such as green data centers, branch office optimization, enterprise collaboration, business mobility, and virtualization. The branch office optimization session will identify issues that diminish application performance and compare vendor solutions.

A session on wireless broadband will examine the key developments in wireless technologies and systems, and how these are shaping a new approach to information technology. Topics will include parity between wired and wireless LANs, metro- and wide-area wireless services, and the challenges of designing mobile communications devices for mobile broadband use.

A panel on greening data centers will address the fact that by 2010, half of all data centers will have to relocate. By 2008, half of all data centers will run out of power and cooling. Forty-eight percent of IT budgets are spent on energy. That means companies requiring the most power will move near dams and power sources. The session will examine power and cooling efficiency, as well as alternative approaches to processing and distribution.

Another general session will cover the use of blogs, wikis, and social networking for the enterprise. Still another will cover the future of mobility in the workplace, addressing mobility's role in unified communications and the evolution of the enterprise. A panel on Network Access Control (NAC) aims to dispel myths about how NAC affects security, while outlining the strengths and weaknesses of NAC.

Keynote speakers will include Matthew Glotzbach, head of products for Google Enterprise; Simon Crosby, CTO and founder of XenSource; Tom Robertson, general manager of interoperability & standards for Microsoft; and Barry Rudolph, VP of portfolio management, disk, software for IBM System Storage.

Speakers from IBM, Microsoft, and Novell will host some of the sponsored sessions, which will focus on the latest technology trends, topics, and challenges, including 802.11n. Other panelists will talk about whether there will be a next-generation LAN.

On Thursday, Kurt Sauter, director of product marketing at Xirrus, will provide a technical overview of the 802.11n standard and explain how the resulting increase in performance will impact network infrastructure. The timing couldn't be better, as vendors begin shipping "Pre-N" products, and organizations question the impact 802.11n will have on their wired and wireless networks.

Alistair Croll, VP of product management and co-founder of Coradiant, will also speak Thursday about how user performance management is changing the way large Web companies fix incidents, manage change, and measure service levels. Croll, who is also an author and instructor, will examine the emergence of user-centric management tools and how they give network operations greater visibility and control of complex and troublesome applications. Charles Crouchman, CTO of Opalis Software, the Run Book Automation company, will present a session on the challenges of change management in IT. He will cover how process automation can help IT executives harness change processes throughout the data center, where they have the greatest concentration of IT resources.

Opalis' CEO and president Todd DeLaughter will specifically cover IT process automation as part of Interop's Enterprise Management Optimization track. That panel will focus on how IT process automation can improve operating efficiencies for enterprise IT organizations. It will also cover how current and emerging automation products and technologies can support IT governance, security, compliance, and best-practice initiatives.

"IT organizations are increasingly turning to Run Book Automation to manage more efficient IT operations," DeLaughter said in a prepared statement. "In recent months, we've seen unprecedented demand for IT process automation as business agility has become more dependent on flexible and reliable IT operations."

Optinuity CEO Scott Stouffer will also take part in that panel.

"The IT process-automation panel at this year's Interop New York event provides an excellent opportunity for decision-makers to listen to the experiences and ask the opinions of some of the most knowledgeable executives in the IT process-automation space today," Stouffer said. "Although much has been said and written about the potential advantages of automation, this panel offers the opportunity to listen to and participate in a discussion of critical factors, including the different products and approaches available today, the basics of how to get started with IT process automation, and what the real value of automation can be."