| | |
| Alternative Delivery Models | IT has reached a tipping point. New technologies (like virtualization) and approaches (like Software as a Service) are enabling a broader spectrum of IT delivery choices – from building and managing all IT in-house, to acquiring capabilities as a service, and all points between. These technologies and approaches can be used internally or externally, changing the very nature of enterprise IT. To make the best decisions, organizations must understand the choices and how they impact the business.
| ADM |
| Application Development & Integration | Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is today’s most important architectural style for new business applications. Best practices in applications management requires evolving the existing application portfolio and architectures to new SOA platforms. This track provides actionable insight in terms of “taking care of business” for service-oriented development of applications, application integration, and legacy modernization. It will address issues such as design concerns, development tools, industry standards, middleware, governance, and organizational issues and best practices gleaned from the experiences of early adopters of SOA. | ADI |
| Business & IT Alignment | Business is evolving rapidly, and IT must keep pace. Increasingly, IT and the business are no longer separate (philosophically or organizationally). As a result, a new approach to business and IT alignment is required. This track will illustrate how key disciplines—such as strategy, governance and architecture—should be approached from a joint (business/IT) perspective. It will also look at how blurring boundaries between business and IT will reshape the IT organization over the next several years. | ITA |
| Business Competencies for IT Leaders | What does it mean to be a business savvy IT leader? Answers can only be provided in the prevailing business context. Today, IT faces three significant trends, each requiring different, non-traditional, business oriented capabilities. They are: Running IT Like a Business; IT assuming operational responsibilities for key business processes; and influencing business agility and innovation through the strategic use of IT. These distinct trends fundamentally reflect individual business attitudes and personality profiles regarding the use of IT. This track will explore the driving nature of each trend and what it uniquely implies for IT competencies. | BC |
| Business Intelligence & Information Management | Business and IT doesn’t have a choice about doing business in digital driven world as supported by applications, information stores, tools, processes, metrics, hardware systems. Information and analysis become the life-blood of all modern organizations and it is the key to increasing business competitiveness and effectiveness. In addition, broader set of users are demanding access to a more diverse set of applications, information sources and services they need to get their job done. This includes access to business user-driven applications, data, content (documents, images, sound) and web content using simple and flexible interfaces (search, tools, mobile devises). Gartner's business intelligence and information management track is focused on delivering insights and advice to help clients access and use structured and unstructured information to gain insights, improve inputs to decisions, flag exceptions and support enterprise processes in order to increase business value. | BI/ IM |
| Business Process Improvement | Operational processes are how strategy is executed and how value is experienced by customers. And yet, despite their importance, most organizations have had only an implicit understanding of their processes - until now. New BPM suites make executing processes transparent (aka explicit) to deliver higher operational excellence and agility. Explicit process management will transform your environment from one in which work is accomplished “the way we’ve always done it” to one in which managers and even customers can monitor and adjust work-in-progress to achieve desired objectives, (rather than rely on historical information about completed business transactions or manual status checks). Such interactive processes will be perceived as responsive and innovative. Those who build a process driven strategy characterized by proactive, real time, explicit management of processes will be more responsive to different customer needs and changing global market dynamics and thus outmaneuver less agile competitors. | BPI |
| Business Process Outsourcing | The business process outsourcing market is the most varied and complex in the IT services market. It is comprised of myriad offerings and providers types, each at maturity and adoption. On the one hand, buyers of BPO need to reconcile which of their processes are most suitable for as candidates BPO by establishing a solid business case and understanding their motivations for outsourcing, often a triangulation of cost reduction, process enhancement, and focus on core business. They need to understand the dynamics of the BPO market at a process level, and which providers are nest suited to their BPO requirements, and how to successfully contract for BPO services over a multiyear period. | BPO |
| Business-Centric IT Operations | A key trend in IT Operations Management is to become more business aligned, by delivering the IT services the business values, using terminology their customers’ understand. Gartner will provide insights on how IT Operations Management can “Get Down to the Business of IT” by becoming customer, product and process centric to deliver trusted IT services to their business customers. Increasingly, most businesses rely on IT services and processes to deliver their business processes; they can’t afford downtime. Yet delivering IT services has its challenges, among them packaging and pricing end-to-end services, achieving service level agreements, developing staffing and skills, refining IT management processes to deliver consistently and effectively, and delivering greater automation to reduce operational costs so that more time can be spent as a trusted advisor contributing to the business. Moreover, new technologies, such as virtualization, real-time infrastructure, SOA, and CMDB, require continued investment in IT operations process management. While challenges abound, the goals are attainable – and required to show business relevancy and value. The presentations in this track will show you how. | ITO |
| Changing Shape of IT | Businesses need to re-focus IT from mainly delivering services to exploit business processes, information and relationships. New disciplines and organizations fuse them with technology to create new value. This changing shape of IT affects your business and career. Learn why and how in this track.
| CSIT |
| CIO Imperatives: Growth & Innovation | Long version: The business of the CIO has changed as executive expectations for growth, performance, and effectiveness require making a difference. Leading CIOs are those that can create enterprise leverage through agility, information, innovation and technical excellence. This requires CIOs to broaden their perspective and blend their leadership roles to solve enterprise issues at speed and scale. CIOs recognize this challenge and the need to evolve the future of the IT organization. This track provides an integrated approach to blending business imperatives with technology capability to achieve the enterprises mission and strategy. | CIO |
| Comparing Megavendors | Megatrends such as Ecosystems, SOA, and the emergence of Software Platforms are forcing IT vendors to broaden their IT portfolios into new areas. Traditional lines of vendor competition are blurring as a result and megavendors who compete across multiple areas of IT (hardware, software, services) are emerging. Enterprises who have big investments in the new megavendors will need to understand their vendors will be affected by these trends. In this track Gartner will explore the megavendors and compare strategies within megatrends of IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, HP, Sun, IBM, EDS, SAP, Cisco, BEA, Accenture and Google. | MEGA |
| Discontinuities & Unconventional Thinking | IT continues to suffer through high impact discontinuities that defy main stream consensus and prediction (e.g., Googledom, Social Networking, The End of the IT Department as we Know it, web 2.0 and the role of consumers and consumer grade technology). This track forces everyone to expand their thinking about what’s possible, to severely question conventional assumptions and to expose themselves to dramatically different view of the future. | DUT |
| Emerging Trends | In order to hit your target you need to aim just above it. So in order to truly take care of business, IT departments must stay abreast of the trends which have a significant bearing on the evolving needs of business users. The Emerging Trends & Technology track will explore the interaction between business, societal and technology trends and explain them in a way so that IT professionals can engage their business counterparts in a relevant way. | ET |
| Enterprise Applications | Gartner 2007 EXP’s CIO survey rated Enterprise Applications (ERP, CRM, SCM) as the second highest technology priority for CIOs. Gartner forecasts mirror this with predicted spending growth of over 12% per year through 2010. This track will cover the hottest topics for IT organizations working on applications and processes projects centred on ERP, SCM, and CRM, for example, sales, marketing, customer service, finance, procurement, logistics, distribution and human resources professionals. Attendees will hear Gartner’s analysis of how applications and processes are changing, the impact of new deployment models around SaaS and BPO, and the impact of Service Oriented Architectures and the importance of Master Data Management. The Track also highlights the key decisions that Users need to answer in deciding when to build, compose, buy, or outsource their applications and processes. | EAPP |
| Enterprise Architecture | As Enterprise Architecture evolves from its traditional focus on enterprise-wide technical architecture to architecting the enterprise itself, architects must begin to focus more on the relationships among business, information, and technology and less on the resources within these domains. Gone are the days when enterprises planned, built, and run all of its vital components itself. Now much of an enterprise's technology, information, and even business processes are either planned, built, or run by third parties (regulators, partners, consultants, and service providers). As a consequence, enterprise architecture, to be successful in such highly federated and virtualized ecosystems must architect the lines, not the boxes. By designing stable yet flexible relationships among the ever-changing boxes (whether those boxes are technology components, organizational structures, or information assets), enterprise architects can better ensure enterprise agility. | EA |
| Green IT | Environmental issues in IT were rarely a point of widespread discussion two years ago. Today they are one of the most hotly debated topics in the industry. Although there is a wide spectrum of beliefs about environmental issues, such as climate change, enterprises need to recognize the rapidly changing opinions of consumers, enterprise decision makers, investors, the media, politicians and the scientific community. This track guides user and vendor organizations on the critical decisions that must be taken and on the way they should position themselves in the face of growing awareness of environmental issues.
| GIT |
| Industry Flash Points | It takes more than a match to light a fire. The Industry Flash Points track contains all the ingredients of a conflagration. The sessions in this track will focus on provocative disruptors in several industries. The power of supply chain disintermediation and virtualization, the rising power of the consumer in organized communities and the drive for environmental sustainability. It will also take a critical look at established disciplines such as Business Process Outsourcing, shared services and data modeling, to uncover whether and how they deliver real value to the business. Sessions will present future scenarios and real-world examples from specific industries such as government, financial services, retail, manufacturing and education, comparing and contrasting case studies and best business and IT practices that you can use in the context of your own firm. | IFP |
| Infrastructure & Operations: Business Communications | Enterprise communications, networking and mobility are at a unique juncture. Users expect access to information and applications anywhere, and want to be connected – all the time, everywhere. Building networks has never been more challenging or critical. Wired and wireless networks now span the enterprise and consumer. Work life and personal life are intertwined. Wireless networks based on 3G cellular and WiFi promise seamless roaming and fixed-mobile convergence. Mobile devices and software clients offer incredible variety and functionality. New unified communications applications such as Internet telephony, presence, and conferencing will be integrated with business functions. The bar for optimization, reliability and security of networks is rising. The challenge is to define an approach that keeps pace with rapid advances in capability, productivity and profitability, while addressing the risks of security issues, cost overruns, and investment obsolescence. This track provides managers, planners, and users with the insight necessary to succeed in this brave new world of business communications. | IO/ BC |
| Infrastructure & Operations: Client Computing | The spectrum of client options continues to expand, bringing added capabilities along with new issues and problems. Alternative client architectures, such as thin clients, blade-based PC’s, virtual desktops, and Wireless WAN, bring with them with issues such as new licensing models, migration and configuration questions, and a re-evaluation of TCO. New operating systems and personal productivity software options, such as Microsoft Vista, and Open Source again challenge established approaches. This track prepares infrastructure planners and managers to evaluate and manage the risks associated with these changes and to effectively build agile organizations by improving workforce effectiveness. | IO/ CC |
| Infrastructure & Operations: Defining Business Value | Providing value is not about working hard or long, it’s about setting the right priorities to gain visibility, credibility and trust from your business customers. IT is under mounting pressure to demonstrate true business value. Rather than just cutting costs, IT Infrastructure and Operations must partner with the business and prove that we understand the business’s expectations, that we can meet or beat those expectations, plus be agile enough to quickly respond to new business requests and priorities. The tracks provides strategic and tactical insights on how to leverage new technologies, mature your processes and technologies, and package, report and deliver your IT services in a way that the business will understand and value. | IO/ DBV |
| Infrastructure & Operations: Servers & Storage | The impact of pervasive virtualization, massively scalable, rapid-response architectures, combined with new challenges such as runaway Data Center power consumption costs will have dramatic consequences on the future of Server and Storage systems. Businesses are not only demanding improved operational efficiency, but also levels of agility to changing market, consumer and compliance demands at a pace never before encountered. This track will provide insight and guidance on operational best practices, choosing from virtualization, server and storage alternatives with an inside look at Gartner’s latest evaluation and maturity models to help manage emerging technologies. | IO/ SS |
| IT Governance | IT management is inceasingly pressured by business demands for both improvements in cost performance and more effective contributions to business growth and global competitiveness. Governance of both IT demand and supply has become a critical constraining factor in IT’s ability to perform and contribute to business value and innovation. This track addresses the frustrations of both business and IT management and ‘peels the onion’ on this complex subject, from strategy to implementation, in a variety of industry contexts.
| ITG |
| Performance Management & Benchmarking | The Performance Management & Benchmarking track provides practical advice on how world-class performance can be achieved using well-designed measurement programs. The track will help you to design and build scorecards and dashboards and it will assist you in communicating the value of IT to your customers. It will provide examples and data that can be used to assess your internal performance and review the competitiveness of your outsourcing agreements. The track is designed for anyone interested in performance management and benchmarking techniques that help to measure and improve cost-efficiency, price-performance and/or the value of IT services. | PMB |
| Portals, Content, Collaboration & Workplace Performance | Shakespeare’s “Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war” never was more apropos to IT than it is today to the world of portals, content and collaboration. IT is being drawn in three different (new) directions simultaneously. Business is demanding Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0 and social and community software options as part of your portal strategy. E-Discovery, policy compliance and risk management requirements are pulling most IT organizations in other directions. Meanwhile, emerging new choices around content services, software as a service, inter-enterprise collaboration, ad-hocracies replacing bureaucracy, the changing nature of work, end-user freedom of choice, consumerization and network virtual environments are obscuring the playing field. We will clear the air and help you focus on the three essentials: technical foundations, adding value to the business by enhancing what people do and executing in the context of the culture, structure, governance rules and the business goals of your organization. | PCC |
| Program & Portfolio Management | Program and portfolio management are the processes organizations use to select and execute projects. Projects are the structured one-time activities organizations do to introduce change. While IT projects can be complex and challenging, they really aren’t about the technology at all. They are about enabling specific business change through the deployment of technology. This track will provide the tools and techniques necessary to pick the right investments (where should we change), manage the work (how to introduce the change) and how to measure the result in terms of enhanced agility, increased competitiveness and reduced risk. | PPM |
| Security, Risk & Compliance | Business units are demanding new ways to interact with customers, while at the same time financial motivated attacks are becoming more sophisticated and regulators are becoming more active. Enabling secure business while minimizing risk and meeting compliance demands requires new security approaches and more agile security processes. This track provides information security scenarios, best practices and implementation toolkits for more business effective security approaches. | SRC |
| SOA | As service oriented architecture (SOA) steadily penetrates mainstream IT, the potential for widespread enterprise and cross-enterprise systems agility and information sharing benefits expands significantly. However, agility and sharing will not automatically materialize. IT organizations must ensure their technology portfolio and internal operations are structured to capitalize on SOA benefits. Additionally, leaders in all segments of the organization must understand how to leverage SOA to build a more responsive business capability. SOA’s potential for delivering business value through increased agility and sharing will go unrealized without concerted IT and business efforts to drive organizational change. "
| SOA |
| Software Futures | The nature of business computing is changing because of evolutionary developments in software technology and revolutionary shifts in the business of software. Technology improvements in Web-based presentation services, enterprise service buses, event processing and declarative SOA development tools build on the industry’s growing understanding of how to do distributed computing well. The business shifts, including software-as-a-service, open source and the network effects of proactive end-user communities, will alter the ways that user companies acquire and use IT | SF |
| Sourcing & Vendor Management | Leaders for Sourcing and Vendor Management must focus on a compelling set of issues and challenges that relate to all an organizations IT purchases. You are faced with a staggering array of market choices, business pressures to combine cost reduction with agility, and a renewed focus on determining how best to manage ALL vendors to the organization. This track will cover the best practices an organization must implement to effectively plan, implement, manage, and govern its sourcing choices. | SVM |
| Technology Trends & Investment Opportunities | Storage, networking and raw computing power form the three pillars of IT infrastructure. An ability to flexibly integrate processing power with the creation, global distribution and effective recovery of vital business and consumer data will be crucial to the future of any successful enterprise. Combining hard market statistics with actionable advice for vendors, business analysts and investment professionals, sessions in this track will examine key technology trends in corporate and consumer markets, paint a portrait of evolving semiconductor, networking and storage opportunities, and closely scrutinize the changing face of IT infrastructure in a dramatically changing world. | TT/ IO |
| The Consumerization of IT | The Consumerization of IT is unstoppable, and will be THE defining influence on the deployment of IT in the enterprise over the next three years. But it is not simply about affordable hardware and the growth of personal devices. Consumerization is an attitude. It is the reflection of the aspirations of a generation, the need for participation, the desire to contribute and the sense of being part of a community. In a world where individuals now have access to more computing power and bandwidth at home than they do in the office, the rules of the game have changed forever, and enterprise IT must adapt accordingly.
| CIT |
| The Innovative Enterprise | Innovation will appear on the business agenda of most organizations in 2008. The good news is that success stories are increasing and solid best practices are emerging. The time is right for you to tackle innovation but you’ll need executive support, cultural change, great processes and more. | IE |
| Web 2.0 and Beyond | Web 2.0 and Beyond will concentrate on the technology, community and participative aspects of Web 2.0 and the impact on social and business models. It will also focus on the innovations driving the next generation of the Web such as virtual worlds, the semantic web and the mobile web.
| W2B |