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Symposium/ITxpo 2008: A Glimpse Ahead

Symposium/ITxpo marries the enterprise goals IT professionals and business leaders tell us are priorities for their organizations, with the technologies and disciplines needed to realize those goals. Armed with those insights and actionable advice, conference attendees return to work better-equipped to succeed both as an organization and as an individual.

Unlike any year in recent history, the financial and macroeconomic environment in the United States (and, increasingly, outside it) is dictating the priorities IT professionals and business leaders tell us are driving their IT decisions. Let’s leave the debate over whether we’re in a recession to the economists, and simply agree that times are tight – a lot tighter than they were even six months ago.

Consistent with that backdrop, a preliminary look at just some of the enterprise priorities and technology areas we’ll delve into at Symposium/ITxpo this year includes:

• Cost Cutting
  Not a question of "if" at this point, but rather where, how and how much? Organizations will turn to a variety of means to this end – virtualization, power & cooling, outsourcing and offshoring, SOA, software as a service, cloud computing, and more. We'll approach cost cutting from a variety of angles, including straightforward discussions of where most organizations can and should cut ("Top 25 Ways to Cut IT Costs") but also how savvy organizations will turn cost containment into a benefit ("Innovation Through Radical Cost-Cutting").



• Panel: 25 Ways to Cut IT Costs
• Benchmarking IT: How Much Should You Spend and Where?
• Changing the Cost Structure of IT
• Restructuring IT Costs
• Total Cost of Ownership of PCs and Alternative Client Architectures: Where Are the Savings?
• Saving Money Through IT Asset Management
• Bring Facebook, Wikipedia and Del.ico.us In-House: Why Consumer Social Software Is Better Than What You Are Paying For
• Using Corporate Performance Management to Understand the Drives of Profitability and Deliver on Strategy
• IT Is Critical to Lean Business Process: Learn Why and How
• Best Practices for Applying Lean in IT
• How to Lead Your Industry in Lean IT
• IT Success Is All About Business Benefits
• Articulating the Business Value of Information Security
• The Business Case for Business Applications
• Building the Business Case for Business Intelligence and Performance Management
• Maximizing Business Value and Avoiding the Fatal Flaws of Business Intelligence


• Process Improvements & Productivity
  Business process management is increasingly top of mind, as this discipline matures and shows tangible benefits for more and more organizations. Business intelligence and analytics are being applied more broadly across the enterprise to ensure the right decisions are being made when it comes to process and productivity initiatives. Enterprise architecture continues to grow in importance as enterprises of all sorts look to solidify and codify process improvements. IT optimization and legacy modernization of applications and infrastructure will be focal points, as well.
  
  
• Innovation
  Who says you can’t innovate during tough times? Not you. Innovation remains a top priority, and Symposium/ITxpo 2008 will address how savvy organizations will turn economic downturn into advantage. Program and portfolio managers will be challenged to juggle operational initiatives, innovation initiatives, and hybrids of the two – not to mention justifying them in the face of business executives’ increased scrutiny of every investment.
  
  
• Customer Service & Retention
  This is the time you batten down the hatches, excel with service to your customers, fend off competitors who want yours, and go out and get theirs. Portals, and the development of self-service and interactive, collaborative customer-facing applications are critical approaches for securing and gaining customers. Staying atop enterprise content and information management, and the analytics thereof, will be key, as well.
  
  
• Risk and Change Management
  Challenging times naturally refocus organizations on inevitable change and managing it effectively. And risk management is increasingly top of mind, as the risks to organizations multiply. Security, compliance, risk management and business process management will all be in sharper technological and business focus as the year progresses, and so they’ll be a major focus at the event.
  
  

With these priorities in mind the agenda for Symposium/ITxpo is being created to address these issues. Check back soon for additional agenda detail on what Symposium/ITxpo 2008.