Agenda

Wednesday April 23, 2008

Overland Park Marriott

8th Annual Kansas City IT Symposium

Knowledge & Networking
7:30 am Attendee Check-In; Breakfast Served
  Midwestern Breakfast Buffet: Assorted Muffins & Croissants, Chef’s Choice of Breakfast Bread, Fruit Preserves & Butter, Sliced Seasonal Fruit, Individual Low Fat Yogurt, Cold Cereals with 2% Milk, Fluffy Scrambled Eggs, Seasoned Breakfast Potatoes, Sausage Links & Bacon Strips, Coffee, Decaffeinated Coffee ,Hot Tea, Assorted Chilled Juices, Assorted Soft Drinks
8:20 am Welcome Message
8:30 am
Ballroom		 Transformation: Changing IT’s Focus from Technology to Business Value
 

Jeff O'Hare
SVP Enterprise IT
West Corporation

We will discuss where the organization was at when I arrived 20 months ago and the vision on where we are taking the organization in the future. Develop a clear focus for the entire technology group to include Vision, Mission, Objectives and Focus areas. Focus on Injecting Technology Leadership, evolving the organization use of meaningful metrics (information) versus just data, Project management methodology/IT process and IT governance (knowing what to outsource/insource) are all pieces of the puzzle.

We’ll review the evaluation process / assessment process evaluation that we went through to develop the baseline we would start at (a lot of companies struggle with where to start).  We’ll end up with where we are today, where we are headed and help the audience understand this is not a process you go though and then put the business plan on the shelf, this is a continuous process.

The vision is something you live by and constantly evaluate the gaps.
9:45 am
Room G		 Server Consolidation and Wide-Area Data Services(WDS) Using a WAN Optimization Solution
 

Sponsored by Net Direct Systems

Paul Farrell
IT Infrastructure Manager
Aquila

In this session, discussion will focus on how and why Aquila transitioned from a distributed file server and Exchange model to a centralized and clustered model, while maintaining the user experience at remote sites and ensuring high availability for all users. The product evaluation and testing process used by Aquila to validate this strategy, as well as overall cost savings and time reductions achieved by implementation of a Riverbed WDS solution will be discussed.
9:45 am
Room I		 Improve Business Effectiveness and Efficiency with BPM
 

Sponsored by BEA Systems

Deron Ertel
Manager of Operational Excellence
Embarq

Leading organizations with successful Business Process Management (BPM) don't just focus on the technology, but see continuous process improvement as an imperative business strategy. Learn how BPM is contributing to EMBARQ'S growth by bringing business users and technologists together with a shared set of tools and strategies to accomplish common goals. EMBARQ is leveraging BPM solutions to support a wide range of collaborative and social process activities that previously were lost in email, documents, and hallway discussions. In today's information economy, organizations must capture these unstructured processes to improve productivity and leverage best practices for growth.
9:45 am
Ballroom		 Preparing your Company for Disaster Outage and Recovery of Business Operations
 

Sponsored by the Topeka Technology Leadership Forum

Tim Blevins
CIO
Kansas Dept. of Revenue

In 2007 every county in the state of Kansas was declared a Federal disaster zone at least one time. The types of natural disaster damage experienced in Kansas were also experienced in the state of Missouri. This session will cover the requirements of business continuity planning and disaster recovery operations. Examples of instituting the disaster recovery or business continuity of operations plans and documents will be reviewed and discussed.  The second half of this breakout discussion will be an open discussion where attendees will be able to share their lessons learned in planning and executing these recovery and continuity of operations plans.
11:00 am
Room G
Secure Access to Systems in an Unsecured World
 

Sponsored by Peak Uptime

Matt Holmes
Systems Manager
Johnson County Community College

Imagine your corporate intranet with thousands of anonymous users walking in every day using your computers, or bringing in their own devices, and accessing your systems. In an educational institution it can be tough to attain security compliance and maintain academic freedom. Like most IT organizations, the IS branch at Johnson County Community College supports network infrastructure, servers, desktops, and applications. We were challenged with reducing the number of disparate systems and methods of access. In this session I will discuss how Johnson County Community College approached securing and authorizing access to a wide variety of IT infrastructure assets.

This session will be interactive and allow attendees to share similar experiences with regards to securing access to IT infrastructure.
11:00 am Room I

Strategies for Aligning IT to the Business
 

Sponsored by Insight

Gary Gruber
Director of Technology Services
Insight

This session will discuss the value and practical application of aligning IT with the business.  What are the leading industry challenges and benefits of implementing a common alignment framework for IT and executive management?   What outcome measures are appropriate to track and report on to the business?  What impact can be expected when completed successfully and what are the critical mistakes most organizations make.  In addition, what strategies can I implement to assess my current state of alignment?  The session will facilitate a discussion for CIO’s and IT executives about lessons learned and industry best practices for establishing IT as a business.   
11:00 am
Ballroom		 Maximizing Capital Investments by Delivering IT as a Utility Utilizing Virtualization Technology
 

Sponsored by Choice Solutions

Rob McCormick
Founder, Architect and Owner
Avatara

This session will cover how to design and deliver a completely virtualized hosting infrastructure that enables the ability to give users both voice and data on an appliance as simple as a thin client device and video monitor. The moderator will share how to think of IT as a utility to be delivered to users anywhere and to whatever capacity is necessary from a centrally manage capacity of resources that can dynamically expand with demand. The net result is maximum use of both capital resources and personnel to grow your business without the constraints of traditional IT overhead and cost.
11:45 am Lunch Served, Networking Opportunity
  Overland Park Deli Buffet: Freshly made Soup of the Day, Seasonal Sliced Fruit, Potato Salad, Tossed Garden Saladw/ choice of dressing, Tuna Salad Spread, Assorted Deli Meats to include: ham, turkey & roast beef, Condiment Tray to include: cheddar, swiss & provolone, cheeses, leaf lettuce, sliced tomatoes, sliced pickles, grey poupon, mustard, mayonnaise & horseradish sauce, Assorted Breads to include: sourdough, wheat, rye & Kaiser rolls, Assorted Cookies & Cookie Bars, Coffee, Decaffeinated Coffee, Assorted Soft Drinks
12:45 pm
Ballroom		 Shift Happened: How to Thrive Instead of Survive in the Aftermath of the Shift From Paper to Electronic Media.
 

Sponsored by IBM

Scott Ward
Director of Records Management, General Counsels Office
Ameriprise Financial, Inc.

The shift from creating and storing our information and communication on paper to creating and storing our information on electronic media has occurred. We are now surviving in the immediate aftermath of the shift. While we struggle to thrive in our new business environment of electronically created and stored information we are contending with data, content, records, metadata, documents, on various electronic media on multiple systems. As this creation and storage activity continues to proliferate large quantities of storage are consumed each day. Increasing storage costs, and risk to your organization result. It is not all about the data any more. While those concerns remain important new challenges related to meeting business and compliance requirements for the official records of the company also come into play when planning for and implementing solutions.

The good news is help with the record keeping challenges is available. Often ready and waiting to contribute to these challenges with information about the statutory, and operational/business needs and requirements for record keeping, your record management team can add value to many teams, and help lower storage costs, space requirements and the grow rate of ESI.
1:45 pm
Room G		 High Availability for Mission Critical Applications:  Overland Park’s Solution
 


Drew Mazeitis
Assistant Director IT
City of Overland Park

Sponsored by Xiotech

Marvin Sommerfeld
Manager, Technical Operations
City of Overland Park
  The City of Overland Park has designed a SAN solution for police data and other mission-critical applications that provides high availability and quick response times.  In this session, Overland Park will explain how they are connecting two data centers and the steps that they have taken to reduce the risk of down-time.   Overland Park’s solution is unique and they are doing things that few others in the country are doing. Come to this session ready for an open discussion.
1:45 pm
Room I		 Implementing Identity Management - A Work in Progress
 

Sponsored by Sun Microsystems

Greg Gray
Systems Analyst, Lead
University of Nebraska

The Gartner and Burton Groups have placed Identity Management (IdM) in the top categories for Information Technology spending in recent years. Many organizations have realized the real value of a IdM infrastructure and the long term benefits of this critical technology. Yet ‘selling’ the purpose and reasons for spending significant dollars on this important technology continues to be a challenge for many organizations.

This presentation will provide an overview of IdM and why it is becoming a critical IT infrastructure component to the University of Nebraska. We will also discuss how the University has begun the process of implementing IdM to its constituents and business communities, and while some strides have been made, there are challenges that remain ahead of us.

Additionally, this session is intended to be interactive and provide the participants an opportunity to discuss and share their approaches to IdM and how they have implemented IdM within their organizations.
2:45 pm
Room G		 Ten Commandments to IT
 

Sponsored by AOS

Dan Jarvis
CIO
Unified Government of Wyandotte County

This session will discuss the 10 commandments that will help you transform your IT organization into an efficient, customer based, do-more-with-less entity.  You will hear the strategy Dan Jarvis has used to streamline the processes with what he terms the 10 Commandments: people, organization, budget, infrastructure, IT governance, disaster recovery, documentation, centralization, e-governance, and marketing. 

This session will share lessons learned and then give everyone an opportunity to share similar experiences for your organization.
2:45 pm
Room I		 Embarq: Journey Through SOA to BPM
 

Sponsored by Beloit Solutions

Howard Bingham
Director, Enterprise Applications
Embarq

Operating in a company where the business units are siloed can present many challenges and inefficiencies.  This session will the discuss the journey Embarq has taken from an IT environment that was siloed to service based organization.  This transition did not happen overnight and presented many challenges along the way.  The thought leader will provide examples of the traditional siloed way of doing business, the drivers that made the company look at service based technology, the selection process, selling the solution to the business, the cultural change challenges experienced, and finish with the metrics that are measuring success.
3:45 pm
Ballroom		 CIO Panel Presentation
  Hear what issues are facing today's CIO's and learn how they are resolving them. This panel discussion, moderated by David Robinson, will provide a rare opportunity to hear first hand what's on the mind of these local executives.


David H. Robinson
CIO & SVP
Lockton Companies

Dan Ross
CIO
State of Missouri


Orlando "Butch" Jagoda
VP IT
Helzberg

Mike Goodwin
SVP IT
Hallmark Cards, Inc.


John Fitzgerald
Executive Director, IT
Westar Energy

Ed Link
VP of IT
Garmin International


Tim Blevins
CIO
Kansas Dept. of Revenue
4:30 pm Closing Remarks, Cocktail Reception with Hors d'oeuvres
  Enjoy this complimentary cocktail reception co-hosted by the Kansas City IT Leadership Forum and the Topeka Technology Leadership Forum featuring an open bar, hors d’oeuvres and conversation.  Make this an important element of your attendance to the IT Symposium.  The ability to network and collaborate with your peers in an open and no-hype environment will prove to provide long lasting value to your key business initiatives moving forward.

 

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