The IT Summit Dallas 2013 | IT Conference | IT Conferences

Enjoy a delicious cup of coffee while catching up with your IT-professional peers and visiting with our vendors, before beginning your day of education and networking.

During the course of his information technology career, Aaron has overseen and managed hardware installations for companies throughout the Northwest. His in-depth knowledge of the software that drives these systems has enabled him to leverage his experience to develop a virtually comprehensive understanding of the issues that his IT peers currently face every day.

Frank got his start in the audio business in High School, playing guitar in bands and running PA systems at local shows. He decided to study film and video production in college with hopes of making documentary films and working as an Editor. He spent his college years selling high end hi-fi and home theatre which lead to him interacting with factory sales representatives on a regular basis. Shortly after college he took a position with Toshiba, working as a Field Service Rep in their consumer division. During this time he found freelance work as an editor on AVID and Media 100 machines. This lead to his first job as a Regional Manager, working for Fast Multimedia, selling PC based non-linear, editing machines. It was during this tenure that he began selling more complex technology solutions. The introduction of Apple’s Final Cut product seemed like a good time to leave the video editing industry, so in 2000 Frank left Fast to join Biamp Systems. During his time at Biamp, Frank was able to grow professionally with the company, with his focus on territory management, project tracking and being a technology evangelist. He spends his free time with his children and he occasionally gets to play guitar.

At this year’s IT Summit in Dallas, Biamp Systems Regional Sales Manager Frank West will present on the topic of Audio Visual Bridging.

Central to his presentation will be application-specific examples about networking audio and video systems throughout a single building (or across multiple facilities) to create a Networked Building.

By utilizing existing networks, it’s possible (and more cost-effective) to achieve clear, crisp audio for teleconferencing, video conferencing, public address, voice evacuation, and background music systems.

Robert is currently the General Manger of Texas for Cologix. Robert leads Cologix sales and field marketing efforts in the Texas region. Robert also serves as the President of the Dallas Ft Worth AFCOM Chapter and sits on the Board of Directors for Metroplex Technology Business Council. Prior to Cologix Robert spent 5 years at Telx, opening up their Dallas office and guiding their entrance into this market, most recently he served as the Head of Global Alliances. Robert’s career started at AT&T; where he spent 8 years working with AT&T;’s (T) largest Media and Internet Companies. Robert has been instrumental in building AT&T;’s Managed Services Business; he has led Sales Teams that have been awarded over $200m in Gross Revenue for AT&T.; Some of these offerings include, AT&T; Managed Hosting, AT&T; Managed Cable IP Service and VoIP Contact Center Migrations Robert has given presentations at top tier conferences on leading edge technologies and applications, including Datacenter World, “Getting Started with Cloud Computing” and 7×24 Exchange “Cloud and Mobility”. He has also spoken locally in Dallas on “Carrier Neutral Collocation” and “Texas Datacenter Market Review”. Robert is a graduate of Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus, with a Bachelors Degree. He currently resides in Dallas, Texas with his wife and 2 daughters. They are actively involved and supporters of United Way and Rainbow Days Charity.

The session will discuss the importance of carrier hotels and deploying applications closer to the edge. We will concentrate on the end user benefits including reducing bandwidth costs, improving page load times, and increasing global availability of applications.

Bob is part of the pioneering team that helped launch Riverbed Technology as a WAN optimization market leader. Bob started at Riverbed in early 2003 as the company’s first product manager and he helped define the feature set for Riverbed’s groundbreaking Steelhead product line. As Riverbed’s Chief Evangelist, Bob heads up the efforts to facilitate conversation among customers, partners, or anyone interested in IT performance technologies. Bob’s effort has resulted in the successful launch of Riverbed’s presence in online communities, regional user groups, blogs, podcasts, and social media venues like Facebook and LinkedIn. A prolific and award-winning speaker, Bob has presented at hundreds of IT related venues around the world, covering topics ranging from successful IT consolidation to optimized disaster recovery.

Applications are the lifeblood of any organization. If end users cannot access an application, they cannot do their jobs effectively. As network demands and the complexity of applications increase, chasing down the root cause of application performance problems becomes a challenging endeavor. After diagnosing the root cause, the next obvious step is to solve the problem. Solving performance problems presents another set of challenges given the wide range of bottlenecks at play.

This session will uncover the bottlenecks that impact application performance problems and introduce innovative technologies that take the first step in diagnosing issues and innovative technologies that cure the problem of poor application performance.

Enjoy networking with your information technology peers over delicious BBQ lunch at The IT Summit.

Join your IT peers for a complimentary luncheon including beef brisket, pulled pork, and all the accompaniments. This is a perfect opportunity to interact with other technology professionals in a relaxed and casual environment.

Matt Hester is a Senior Information Technology Professional Evangelist for Microsoft. Matt has been involved in the IT Pro community for over 20 years. Matt is a skilled and experienced evangelist presenting to audiences nationally and internationally. Prior to joining Microsoft Matt was a highly successful Microsoft Certified Trainer for over 8 years. After joining Microsoft, Matt has continued to be heavily involved in IT Pro community as an IT Pro Evangelist. In his role at Microsoft Matt has presented to audiences in excess of 5000 and as small as 10. Matt has written 4 articles for TechNet magazine. In addition Matt has published 3 books.

Cloud computing is emerging as a promising IT service delivery vehicle. But is the question “To cloud or not to cloud”? For IT professionals and your IT organizations, it is crucial to recognize the opportunities and play a key role in the transformation from existing infrastructure-focused IT into a service-oriented, user-centric, and IT-as-a-Service (IaaS) environment. Are you ready for the challenge to lead and transform your IT organization?

This session will clarify the myths and provide pertinent information on cloud computing from a business and IT professional’s viewpoint. We will review the architectures and examine the service delivery models of cloud computing while stepping through business scenarios and operations of employing public cloud and private cloud.

Ralph Johnson is the Chief Information Security and Privacy Officer for King County, Washington and President of the Holistic Information Security Practitioners Institute (HISPI) Governance Board. Mr. Johnson’s has been with King County for 23 years serving in multiple IT and management roles. For the past 8 years Mr. Johnson has held the position of Chief Information Security and Privacy Officer in which he oversees information security and privacy issues for the entire county infrastructure. In this capacity he established the information assurance program from policy development to controls selection, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. He has held the position of HISPI Governance Board President since April of 2012 and served as Governance Board Secretary for three years prior to assuming his current role. Mr. Johnson also serves on the Product Review Board for the Trusted Purchasing Alliance of the Multi State – Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) and is a member of the MS-ISAC’s Education and Awareness Committee and the National Association of Counties (Naco) Cyber-Security Task Force. Mr. Johnson has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Eastern Oregon University and an Associate’s degree in Mortuary Science form San Francisco College of Mortuary Science. He holds multiple certifications in information security, information privacy, network administration and project management.

This presentation introduces the essential goals of information security and presents success factors essential for a successful information security program. The audience will also be introduced to the HISPI (Holistic Information Security Practitioner Institute) framework and how this framework benefits organizations and individuals who chose to become trained and certified.

Tim Healy has over 15 years of experience in the telecommunications industry. This experience in sales and sales management, while designing complex business grade IP based voice and data solutions, has allowed Tim to successfully address the communications needs of the SMB market as well as large enterprises across the US and the UK. These solutions include LAN & WAN infrastructure, telephony hardware and voice and data connectivity. Tim’s has held multiple positions at MedQuist, Telekenex and Comcast Business and is currently the Managed Services Consultant for Telepacific Communications specializing in Hosted PBX.

We know that having the right communications infrastructure in place is vital to a business growth and sustainability. It is suggested that companies are starting to have growth and scalability challenges with traditional PBX’s. Today, the latest form of business communication has emerged, Hosted PBX. Hosted PBX’s have emerged to help businesses eliminate up front capital investments, reduce core communication expenses, provide predictable monthly costs, eliminate phone system maintenance fees and mitigate technological obsolescence. What is the right solution for my business?

At Energy Future Holdings, Ravi holds the position of Vice President, IT Governance & Strategy reporting to the CIO. He is responsible for providing strategic leadership across multiple functions in IT including Strategy, Finance, Vendor and Contract Management, IT Sourcing, Architecture, Quality Assurance, and Project Management. Additionally, he is responsible for cost management and performance improvement initiatives across all aspects of IT operations to drive efficiency and reduce costs in order to achieve top-quartile performance in IT delivery and value. Ravi originally joined the IT organization at TXU Energy in early 2011 in a similar capacity, originally serving TXU Energy as Director of IT Performance, Vendor and Financial Management. Shortly after, delivery and operational responsibilities were added when he took on the role of Director of Customer Applications and Performance Management. He was instrumental in helping drive significant reductions in IT spend and improved performance for TXU Energy during this time as well as rolling out several key application platforms and suites. Previously, Ravi held the position of Chief Operating Officer at two financial services companies in addition to serving as a senior executive at several IT software companies. Ravi is a graduate of Brown University where he received his degree in Political Science.

Tools and Best Practices to Drive IT Cost Management. Creating a Culture of Financial Excellence in IT.

As a special thank you to all of our guests at The IT Summit, our sponsors have arranged for a prize drawing for you, our valued supporters. The prizes are different at every conference, but in the past have included items such as iPods, golf clubs, sporting event tickets, and eReaders.

Aerohive Networks simplifies enterprise networking by reducing the cost and complexity of distributed enterprise deployments with cloud-enabled Wi-Fi and routing solutions for medium and large headquarters, campuses, branch offices and teleworkers. Aerohive’s award-winning cooperative control architecture, public or private cloud platform, and easy-to-deploy routing and VPN solutions eliminate costly hardware appliances and single points of failure, drastically simplify network operations, and provide mission-critical reliability and the flexibility to start small and expand your deployment without limitations.

Alpheus provides telecommunications and data center services for enterprises and carriers. As the competitive fiber backbone for Metro Texas, Alpheus is in a unique position to supply resilient data center platforms and support services that help businesses focus on their operations-not their IT.

We serve enterprise customers in the healthcare, energy, banking, IT and legal fields.
As an optical network provider for backhaul, transport and outsourced fault management service, we are flexible, content-neutral and responsive to client needs. We deliver metro transport to the places our carrier clients need to go, including end-user building, cell sites, carrier hotels, microwave relay points, and Wi-Fi hotspots.

AMX hardware and software solutions simplify the way people interact with technology. With the increasing number of technologies and operating platforms at work and home, AMX solves the complexity of managing this technology with reliable, consistent and scalable systems. Our award-winning products span control and automation, system-wide switching and audio/video signal distribution, as well as digital signage and technology management. They are implemented worldwide in conference rooms, homes, classrooms, network operation / command centers, hotels, entertainment venues and broadcast facilities, among others.

ACP has over 2,300 active members in 42 chapters across the United States. ACP is a growing organization! Members serve in a variety of public and private industries including Financial, Information Technologies, Telecommunications, Utilities, Manufacturing and Distribution, Education, Consulting, Health Care, and others.

The love of sound is Biamp‘s reason for being, and has been since our founding 35 years ago. We’ve grown to be an acknowledged international leader in professional installed audio electronics. Our staff still shares a passion for sound that resonates through every product and every decision the company makes.

You can sense our dedication to sound when you call for support and Biamp’s own technicians answer — in-house. You touch it when you use our intuitive software to configure new systems. You can hear our passion for great sound grow louder with every breakthrough design Biamp launches.

Most people have never seen Biamp products, but they’ve probably heard them work wonders — in airports, arenas, courtrooms, Houses of Worship, theaters, universities, corporations, and conference centers. Around the world, around the clock, Biamp equipment is delivering, managing and enhancing the sound.

For the love of sound, we never stop experimenting, tinkering and making the impossible actually practical. Because ultimately, when the lights dim and the speakers come on, it’s not about the system. It’s all about the sound..

CEO Netweavers is an organization of over 380 CEO’s and sponsored senior service providers. Each member meets a combination of business and Servant Leadership criteria, and is committed to sharing experience, skills and trusted relationships solely to help each other and their communities.

The dual commitment to Netweaving and Servant Leadership results in a uniquely trusted community of lifetime relationships that offers our members the opportunity to interact and help in a myriad of ways, and to have confidential conversations with other members that are welcomed.

Chapters are currently established in Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston and Atlanta. Each Chapter has an array of activities for their members, and welcomes travelling members from other Chapters.

Cologix provides our reliable data center colocation platform in our premier datacenter colocation facilities located in the most connected areas in the US and Canada.

Over 550 customers rely on Cologix to protect and connect their mission-critical infrastructure in 12 strategic data center locations in Dallas, Minneapolis, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver where networks connect.

Global Knowledge is the worldwide leader in IT and business skills training, with more than 1,500 courses delivered via training centers, private facilities, and the Internet. We provide foundational and specialized training on Cisco, Microsoft, Avaya, VMware, Red Hat, business process improvement, leadership development and more.

The Holistic Information Security Practitioner (HISP) Institute (HISPI) is an independent certification organization consisting of volunteers that are true information security practitioners, such as Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), Information Security Officers (ISOs), Information Security Managers, Directors of Information Security, Security Analysts, Security Engineers and Technology Risk Managers from major corporations and organizations.

The HISPI certification approach prides itself on ensuring that an educational foundation provided by information security training is the corner stone of the HISP certification and the Institute as a whole.

Don’t stop at IT security certification alone. IT certification is important but full security training for a business’s IT Security team is what will make you stand out from the competition. The security certification available through HISPI will show your commitment to the process.

Ignite Technologies’ advanced product suite includes IgniteLIVE, our streaming solution for live events, Media Portal, a corporate social media experience, and our Content Delivery Solution, which features solutions for your Live, On Demand and Push content delivery needs. Ignite’s products keep you agile in an ever-changing technological landscape, allowing your business communications to succeed by staying on the cutting edge of corporate media management and delivery.

Our business video services allow you to fundamentally change the way the members of your organization communicate, from employees and partners to global clientele. Ignite’s sophisticated corporate video streaming technology enables the efficient, easy creation and distribution of digital assets and allows streamlined digital content delivery. Our advanced APIs also enable efficient integration with various other enterprise applications, learning management systems and portals.

In addition, Ignite Technologies has created apps for content viewing on iPads, iPhones and Android devices.

In 2005, several business analysts from the Dallas/Fort Worth area expressed an interest in forming a local chapter of the IIBA. A kickoff meeting was held on November 2, 2005. It was followed by a meeting on January 19, 2006 to review and approve the bylaws, accept volunteers for chapter leadership positions, and determine future meeting topics. On March 4, 2006, another meeting was held for election of officers. Currently, the Dallas Chapter of the IIBA has approximately 70+ members. Meetings are usually held on the 3rd Thursday of the month with presentations covering business analysis topics.

InfraGard is a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) program that began in the Cleveland Field Office in 1996. It was a local effort to gain support from the information technology industry and academia for the FBI’s investigative efforts in the cyber arena. The program expanded to other FBI Field Offices, and in 1998 the FBI assigned national program responsibility for InfraGard to the former National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) and to the Cyber Division in 2003. InfraGard and the FBI have developed a relationship of trust and credibility in the exchange of information concerning various terrorism, intelligence, criminal, and security matters.

The primary goal of the Information Systems Security Association, Inc. (ISSA) is to promote management practices that will ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of organizational information resources. Information systems security is an increasingly critical aspect of information systems design and maintenance. Many organizations do not have dedicated information systems and network security personnel they have generalists many of whom are not familiar with information security practices. The ISSA is dedicated to providing resources to such people and organizations, as well as to generally raising the level of security and data privacy consciousness among information systems personnel in all organizations.

To achieve this goal, members of the Association must reflect the highest standards of ethical conduct and technical competence. Therefore, ISSA has an established Code of Ethics and requires it’s observance as a pre-requisite and continuation of membership and affiliation with the Information Systems Security Association. For a copy of the Code of Ethics go to the ISSA web site.

Riverbed delivers performance for the globally connected enterprise.

With Riverbed®, enterprises can successfully and intelligently implement strategic initiatives such as virtualization, consolidation, cloud computing, and disaster recovery, without fear of compromising performance.

When organizations consolidate IT and move to cloud environments, the distance created between users and their data often results in high-latency and reduced bandwidth. Riverbed WAN optimization, network performance management, and cloud storage solutions enable enterprises to overcome these drawbacks. At Riverbed we make it easy to understand, optimize, and accelerate IT, so that organizations can build a fast, fluid, and dynamic IT architecture.

IDS/IPS is at worst complicated and at best time-consuming. Installing the software and configuring the sensors, monitoring events, managing signatures, updating software… It’s not for the faint of heart.

Enter Sentinel. Configuration is a snap. The hardware installs in 90 seconds, with little or no network downtime. We manage the signatures, updates, upgrades, and monitoring of the system. We work with you to mitigate any false positives and make sure they don’t happen again. We provide you with a powerful and intuitive user interface so you can manage the unit’s configuration and utilize the extensive activity and compliance reporting.

When it comes to competitive telecom carriers, one name stands above the rest. TelePacific. The largest competitor to AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink in California and Nevada is now one of the top communications provider options nationwide with a private fiber network that can serve any business in the country. We’ve also added a major footprint in Texas. This strong position brings competitive advantages to our more than 40,000 business customers who have over a million lines in service all across the U.S.

Since 1986, Unique Digital has been providing our customers with the tools and knowledge to ensure that their data is secure, protected, available and recoverable.We address the entire storage infrastructure life-cycle to deliver end-to-end solutions that successfully corresponds with our client’s needs. By partnering with industry leading manufacturers, we are able to provide our customers with superior computer hardware and software solutions at competitive prices.

Whether the need is networked storage, tiered storage, data life-cycle management, backup/restore, virtualization, consolidation or disaster recovery; Unique Digital can help.

WatchGuard builds affordable, all-in-one network and content security solutions to provide defense in depth for corporate content, networks and the businesses they power. WatchGuard’s award-winning Extensible Threat Management (XTM) network security solutions combine firewall, VPN, and security services to protect networks from spam, viruses, malware, and intrusions. The new Extensible Content Security (XCS) appliances offer content security across email and web combined with data loss prevention for complete content protection. WatchGuard extensible solutions scale to offer right-sized security for small businesses up to enterprises with 10,000+ employees. Since our founding in 1996, more than 600,000 WatchGuard signature red security appliances have been deployed worldwide. Today more than 15,000 dedicated partners back our products in 120 countries. WatchGuard is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with offices in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.