Gartner Celebrates 25th Annual Data Center Conference, November 28-December 1 in Las Vegas

Conference Has Grown from 250 Attendees at Its First Event to Nearly 2,000 Attendees Expected for This Year’s Conference

STAMFORD, Conn., November 13, 2006 — While many technology events have come and gone during the past quarter of a century, Gartner Inc. is celebrating its 25^th Annual Data Center Conference, which will be held November 28-December 1 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

The conference has grown from approximately 250 attendees in 1982 to nearly 2,000 attendees expected to attend this year’s event. The conference has also grown from seven sessions at the first event to more than 50 analyst-led sessions scheduled this year. There were no sponsors at the premier event, while more than 100 sponsors are expected this year.

“The Data Center Conference has evolved from a hardware event to a conference that focuses on a plethora of issues, such as hardware, software, operations, business continuity and best practices,” said Patty Foggin, vice president of U.S. Conferences for Gartner Events.

“The conference has continued to increase its profile as the nature of the IT business has expanded from solely back-office processes to include customer-facing business processes,” said Mike Chuba, research vice president at Gartner and conference co-chair, who has presented at every Gartner Data Center Conference. “The roles of the data center and IT operations have become even more critical to every organization whose business touches clients via some form of information technology.”

This event has shifted from a conference that focused in the early years on predicting what IBM was going to do, to a gathering that focuses on analysis of the implications of what dozens of vendors are doing, what thousands of customers needs will be, and putting the pieces together to determine how the market will evolve.

Attendees at this event will be equipped with the strategies and insights for all the pertinent issues surrounding data centers. One of the key reasons for the success of the Data Center Conference is that Gartner focuses on what attendees outline as their priorities and biggest issues. Gartner also includes highly popular initiatives at the Data Center Conference, such as interactive audience polling, analyst one-on-ones and analyst/user roundtables.

This year’s conference will include five tracks addressing the critical issues facing today’s data center industry. They include:

• Servers: This track focuses on server infrastructure, utilization, and sprawl, Windows, Unix, Linux and z/OS markets, plus blades, virtualization, capacity on demand, GRID and clustering.
• IT Operations: This track takes a closer look at IT operations and infrastructure management trends and offers practical advice on contributing to business value.
• Storage: This track focuses on storage hardware and software management and acquisition, with an eye toward optimizing storage ROI.
• Business Continuity Management and Disaster Recovery: This track explores how to implement a sound business continuity plan — recognizing that even small disruptions can have a huge impact on critical business systems — and that planning should be centered around people as well as assets.
• Best Practices: This “all-encompassing track” completes the corporate data center agenda with best-practice presentations on server consolidation, managing shared storage, power and cooling, problem management, and the journey to a real-time infrastructure.

Keynote speakers include Yossi Sheffi, MIT Professor and author of the award-winning and widely acclaimed “The Resilient Enterprise," and Rick Reilly, Sports Illustrated columnist and best-selling author.

Mr. Sheffi will discuss organization vulnerability, disruption preparedness and resilience. He will describe the wide role of the IT function in emergency preparedness and recovery, in addition to issues such as supply chain design and corporate culture.

Mr. Reilly is the author of the popular Sports Illustrated column, “Life of Reilly," and the New York Times best-selling book of the same name. Rick will be presenting a collection of hilarious true stories that have happened to him during his nearly 30 years covering sports.

For complete event details, please visit the Gartner Data Center Conference Web site at www.gartner.com/us/datacenter. More than 100 companies will be sponsors exhibiting at the conference. A listing of Gartner Data Center conference sponsors is available at conference Web site.

Additional companies interested in participating as a Conference Sponsor should contact Brent Bodick at 203-316-1757 or at brent.bodick@gartner.com. Members of the media can register for the event by contacting Christy Pettey at christy.pettey@gartner.com.



Contact:


Christy Pettey
Gartner
+1 408 468 8312
christy.pettey@gartner.com


About Gartner:
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the indispensable partner to 60,000 clients in 10,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,000 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants in 80 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.