Key Industry Figures to Address SNW Fall 2008

Storage Networking World (SNW), in conjunction with Computerworld and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced today an illustrious roster of IT executives, industry leaders and industry analysts to address SNW Fall 2008 to be held October 13-16, 2008 at the Gaylord Texan in Dallas, Texas.

Storage Networking World is the world’s largest and foremost storage networking event and the only conference where IT managers and professionals get an education endorsed by SNIA and a hands-on view of the world’s only SNIA-sanctioned Solutions Center. At SNW, attendees can choose from over 140 educational sessions and network with peers from around the globe, plus visit with top solutions providers in the world’s largest Expo focused on storage.

Featured presenters at Storage Networking World Fall 2008 include:

Diane Bryant, vice president and chief information officer, Intel Corporation
Bryant is vice president and chief information officer (CIO) of Intel Corporation where she is responsible for Intel’s Information Technology organization. Intel’s IT organization delivers strategic value by providing professional support, applications, and solutions that enable Intel’s growth and transformation.
Bryant will present ‘Managing the Information Explosion.’
A vision of the datacenter of the future: The increasing complexities of semiconductor design and manufacturing drive unique challenges for Intel. Bryant will offer her perspective on current and future challenges in managing the information explosion. She will highlight some of the key initiatives to address these challenges, innovative technologies, and the implications on storage.

Derek Chan, head of digital operations, DreamWorks Animation
Chan is head of digital operations for DreamWorks Animation. In this role, Chan provides strategic vision and planning for the animation studio’s computing infrastructure — which includes systems engineering, systems operations, technical resource management, hardware engineering and virtual studio collaboration development.
Chan will present ‘How to Unleash Artistic Creativity with Innovative Storage Technology.’
DreamWorks, a world-class animation company that has produced and distributed classics such as Shrek, Shrek 2 and Antz, expects technology to enable one of the most talented teams of technical leaders and artists in the industry to create blockbuster movies faster and reach a scale never believed possible. To this end, a multiyear IT overhaul was undertaken to build new systems that allow for cross-site collaboration, a dramatic increase in WAN bandwidth and mitigation of latency between sites. In this session, Chan will discuss the challenges involved in making the IT upgrades while in active production and the metrics DreamWorks Animation is using to measure the success of the project on productivity and workflow.

Burzin Engineer, vice president of infrastructure technology, Shopzilla, Inc.
Engineer is vice president of infrastructure technology at Shopzilla, Inc. Engineer has more than 18 years of experience in the IT industry. His experience ranges from system and database administration to network/storage design and architecture. His technology focal points revolve around solving today’s largest IT problems such as server consolidation, virtualization, data mobility and ILM. At Shopzilla, Engineer is responsible for all facets of IT, including network, storage, systems and internal IT.
Engineer will present ‘Real-World File Virtualization: How Increasing Data Mobility Can Reduce the Costs of File Storage.’
Although not a line-item in most storage budgets, the cost of managing storage can greatly outweigh the initial cost of acquiring it. At Shopzilla, the lack of data mobility was causing operational costs to balloon around end-of-life events for storage. The effort of manually modifying their frontline application source code in order to perform the migrations to new platforms consumed IT resources, forcing Shopzilla to delay migrations and pay exorbitant support costs on older gear. In this session, Engineer will discuss the real cost benefits of improving data mobility, including slashing migration times from months to days — through the use of file virtualization.

Madge Meyer, executive vice president, State Street Corporation
Meyer is executive vice president and head of global infrastructure services at State Street Corporation. In this role, Meyer is responsible for State Street’s technology infrastructure solutions and services across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Americas.
In 2004, Meyer was named to Computerworld’s Premier 100 list, which honors individuals who have had a positive impact on their organization through technology, and in 2007 she was named to the YWCA Boston’s Academy of Women Achievers. In 2008, she received the Visionary Award from Symantec, while the Computerworld Honors Program celebrated her technological leadership by naming her as a Laureate, and also honored her team with their 21st Century Achievement Award.
Meyer will present ‘IT Transformation & Optimization as a Competitive Advantage.’
As the world’s leading investment service provider, State Street delivers customized solutions to asset managers, pension funds, hedge funds, insurance companies, collective funds, mutual funds and nonprofit institutions. State Street maintains operations in 26 countries and spans more than 100 markets. In Europe and Asia-Pacific, State Street is currently growing faster than the market itself and, in response, has globalized its operational model, shifting certain business processes to lower-cost geographic locations, including Eastern Europe, India and China. Fundamental changes to ‘where, when, and how’ work actually gets done have overthrown many assumptions once embedded in the IT mindset. Driven by this environment, Meyer will discuss strategies for transformation and optimization of technology that can provide a competitive advantage and enable business success.

Nicholas Negroponte, cofounder, MIT MediaLab and founder, One Laptop per Child (OLPC)
Negroponte is one of the foremost futurists of our time, a fine speaker with a distinguished history of valuable insights on innovation, technology and their impact on business that few can match. Negroponte was the first to predict and describe how digitalization would affect every industry in every part of the world. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller ‘Being Digital.’ He has continued to understand the directions that technology is taking business and society and to effectively forecast the transformations that are defining our future. He is the founding chairman of MIT’s Media Lab, one of the world’s leading interdisciplinary research centers.
Negroponte is the driving force behind One Laptop per Child, a project to bring durable, affordable and innovative computers to children worldwide. As a computer, OLPC is a conceptual and technological breakthrough that is destined to revolutionize computing. As a nonprofit, OLPC is also a conceptual breakthrough that is destined to transform global education and economic development.
Negroponte will present ‘The Future Lies Ahead.’
Negroponte will share his valuable insights on innovation and technology and their impact on the way we do business. He will discuss the new focus on simplicity rather than the current preoccupation with complexity, the corresponding focus on compactness and usability in software, instead of increasingly powerful software enabled by increasing processor power, and the opening and converging of platforms on the model of the current wireless explosion

Ian Patterson, chief information officer, Scottrade
Patterson is the chief information officer for Scottrade, Inc., a leading branch-supported online investment firm based in St. Louis, Mo. He has more than 20 years of experience in the analysis, design, development and implementation of hardware, software and security. Patterson has led the design and implementation of the firm’s new $25 million data center, the largest technology investment ever made by the company.
Patterson will present, ‘Managing Large-Scale Network Deployment Projects with Success.’
Patterson will discuss two critical network deployment projects Scottrade has successfully completed in the last two years.
The first project he will detail is the design, build and implementation of a 10 GB network that processes traffic for two million customer accounts and handles, at peak, more than 600,000 messages/second into a new $25 million data center. The project included the movement of more than 300 TB of data to the new facility without service interruption or loss of data. Second, Patterson will discuss Scottrade’s successful implementation of an MPLS network connecting more than 370 branch offices across the country to the firm’s St. Louis headquarters. Both implementations had challenges and design ramifications, including performance, latency, monitoring, and security considerations. Patterson will explain how Scottrade managed each to successful completion creating business value for the organization while at the same time enhancing security.

Marty Smith, chief information technology officer, ChoicePoint
Smith is chief information technology officer for ChoicePoint, a leading provider of identification and credential verification services. The company serves the information needs of business, government and nonprofit organizations including the nation’s largest insurance companies and more than half of the Fortune 100. Smith is responsible for all of the organization’s technical infrastructure and data center operations, leading a department of more than 400 associates. The information technology department at ChoicePoint ensures the integrity and continual availability of corporate data, proprietary information and related intellectual property through information security and access management.
Smith will present, ‘Poised for Growth: Optimizing the Data Center to Increase Performance and Generate Cost-Savings for Business Unit Customers.’
ChoicePoint developed a shared services model for 60 acquisitions across 6 business units in 11 years that were a nightmare to manage from an infrastructure standpoint. Previously, ChoicePoint was a hosting facility for the business units that would buy and stand up servers on their own. Due to tremendous business growth and a change in the marketplace, the company was faced with a decision a few years ago to either expand the data center or make better use of under-utilized systems. They chose to use a shared services model and consolidate 23 SAN islands. This move has cut costs by 40% and made the data center more manageable. In this session, Marty Smith will share the details of their data center optimization plan and the green strategies they are deploying in order to increase efficiency, savings and help the environment.

For the Storage Networking World Fall 2008 schedule