Breakout Session Abstracts

Business Process Infrastructure Optimization - Bart Bischoff

"Today’s business climate is more challenging than ever, and businesses are under constant pressure to lower costs while improving overall operational efficiency. In short, businesses are being asked to “do more for less”. As businesses advance their IT capabilities and achieve a sustained improvement in their IT infrastructure, they must take a long-term, strategic view of optimization and link these capability and optimization improvements to their business needs and strategy to achieve their business objectives. We see Business Productivity Infrastructure Optimization (BPIO) as a flexible model for infrastructure optimization that can lead to a roadmap for infrastructure maturity.

The goal for infrastructure optimization is to help companies realize the full value of their IT infrastructure to drive business results. In this presentation we will introduce the BPIO model and the different stages of maturity while providing examples of services that have applied the BPIO model to solve real business situations."

Core Infrastructure Optimization - Damir Bersinic

Having a plan and methodology to take your organization to the next level by simplifying your IT infrastructure allows organizations to reap many benefits. The Infrastructure Optimization (IO) model allows you to assess your current place within the model and create a roadmap to move to a more agile infrastructure. This session will provide an overview of the IO model and how organizations can use the available tools and guidance to enhance their core infrastructure and reap the benefits of a Dynamic Organization.

Application Platform Optimization - William Oellermann

One of the most challenging scenarios for Enterprises today is change. Whether change is driven by business priorities or technical implementations, the inability to absorb or embrace change as appropriate is something that short circuits the best IT strategies available. We see Application Platform Optimization through SOA as an opportunity to provide a flexible roadmap that helps you get from point A to point B, even when those two points are moving targets. In this presentations we will introduce a model that can help you define the roadmap for your organization, as well as some implementation assets that can help you to enable an agile infrastructure that can absorb and embrace change.

Data Center Virtualization Roundtable: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly - Richard Campbell

Today virtualization in the data center is a reality. The challenge is figuring out how far to go, what makes sense and where the troubles lie. Join this round table discussion, moderated by Richard Campbell, and share your thoughts and experiences on the good, bad and ugly of virtualization in the data center.

Building an Agile IT – The CN Way - Plamen Hristov

This session will explore how CN is leveraging the Microsoft Platform to deliver applications in an agile fashion.

Managing a Virtual Infrastructure - Damir Bersinic

In this session, we will examine System Center tools for managing virtual environments, including Microsoft Hyper-V, Virtual Server 2005 R2, and VMWare. You will learn how a unified management vision for both virtual and physical environments allows you to simplify your IT infrastructure and helps to automate many of the management tasks faced by administrators on a daily basis. We will also look at some data protection challenges of virtual environments and how Data Protection Manager 2007 (DPM 2007) can be used to protect critical data and physical and virtual machines while they are active, which also increase availability.

Server 2008 as a SOA Application Platform - Dave Remmer

This session takes a look at the various components of Windows Server 2008 and how they can be leveraged to build solutions. Focus will placed on IIS, WAS, and .Net 3.0 but features like Virtualization, Server Core, and Active Directory enhancements will also be explored.

Business Intelligence in the Enterprise - Kristina Kerr

At this roundtable we’ll discuss issues that affect organizations when implementing various types of business intelligence solutions. There are a common set of problems that prevent many BI implementations from being successful. This discussion will cover how Microsoft endeavors to resolve those issues.

Realizing Dynamic Systems - Dave Remmer

This session will cover the fundamental building blocks of architectures that support dynamic systems. Looking at the creation of health models as well as complex event generation and recognition we will investigate how these underpin systems that can determine remedial actions themselves. We will also look at some of the process changes that need to take place in our teams in order to build dynamic systems.

Improving the End User Computing Experience at Bombardier - Alain Paquette

In 1999, Bombardier Aerospace (BA) defined an innovative Windows 2000 PC image that is still efficient. 8 years later, Bombardier Aerospace is defining a program to improve and enhance the End User Computing (EUC) experience. The presentation will go through BA EUC evolution, Vision and Communication program to make such program a business priority.

Building Business Intelligence Applications with the MS Platform - Kristina Kerr

In this session you will see an important part of the overall Microsoft BI platform in action from end to end. Learn how by integrating SQL Server 2005 with SharePoint 2007 you can enable users throughout your organization to access powerful reporting capabilities. See how you can use Excel 2007 to analyze multidimensional data from SQL Server Analysis Services, we will also demo the SQL Server Data Mining Add-In for Excel 2007, a set of easy to use capabilities that enable predictive analysis on every desktop. In addition, utilize Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to get the thin Excel experience in Excel Services by creating excel web parts, dashboards and to collaborate across the organization.

Roadmap for Implementing an SOA - Mohammad Akif

The debate about whether SOA is a good idea seems to be winding down. Industry studies show that a signifcant percentage of enterprises have decided to embark on this journey and want to create a roadmap realizing the benefits of SOA. Join us and your peers to discuss the best and not-so-good real-world SOA practices that will help you avoid pitfalls and enable you to capatilize on the learnings.

Internet Service Bus - Mohammad Akif

An Internet Service Bus provides a platform for creating and deploying composite applications that integrate services from various sites. As Web Services and Web 2.0 technologies become popular, the need for providing internet service bus is increasing. Join us and your peers to discuss the key ideas behind this important architectural concept and its potential applicability in your enterprise.

Building the Optimized Desktop - Darin Travis

The desktop is the most unpredictable and uncontrollable part of you infrastructure and like it or not it is part of your infrastructure. During this session we will discuss how you can use innovative technologies to help reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the Windows desktop. This session will discuss how you can accelerate operating system and application management and enhance IT responsiveness and user uptime. We will also discuss how to better control the desktop, accelerate and simplify desktop deployments. Also how to improve management and create a more dynamic infrastructure.

Architecting Solutions using the Windows Live Platform - Ryan Storgaard

This session will provide an overview of the architectural elements of the Windows Live Platform. The Windows Live Platform provides APIs for core services such as Windows Live Contacts, Windows Live Messenger, Live ID, Search, and Virtual Earth. These APIs can be used to create dynamic and interactive applications that include mapping, streaming media, instant messaging, storage, presence, contacts, authentication, and more.

Security - Damir Bersinic

Facing challenges with Identity Management? The Security Roundtable will provide you a forum to share your ideas and experiences with your peers on this important topic. We will start with a common understanding of some of the issues of end-to-end trusts, single sign on and managing identities, and then open the floor for you to participate in this very important discussion.

Malware Landscape Update - Roger Grimes

Almost all malware is criminally motivated today. Two or three cyber criminals are responsible for 60% of all the Internet malware. Their bots are self-updating, fast-fluxing, and can exploit dozens of vulnerabilities to break into end-user machines. Perhaps the biggest surprise is how many legitimate web sites are spreading this malware. Attend this session and learn about malware’s latest tricks and exploits.

Building the Optimized Desktop - Darin Travis

The SQL Server 2008 Data Platform - Ram Ramanathan

Attend this session to learn about the breadth of new features in SQL Server 2008. In this session, we will walk through the new developer functionality from SQL Server and .NET Framework enabling you to build the next generation of data applications leveraging the new data types and programmability features. We will also walk through the business intelligence capabilities, from reporting, analysis to data integration, enabling you to reach more users with relevant information. Finally we provide a brief overview of core enterprise platform capabilities, covering security, scalability, availability and manageability features. This session will be a mix of demos and slides covering the different aspects of the product.

Risk Management Issues in Security - Dana Epp

Security is about risk mitigation, not risk avoidance. When considering the checks and balances of developing and/or deploying technical safeguards to reduce business risk to acceptable levels, it may be seen as too expensive to design in from the start. In this roundtable, we will explore the implications of applying security to business workflow, and discuss openly how this balances with the real world constraints of budgets vs. acceptable risk.

Security Defence Trends - Roger Grimes

Get rid of the DMZ! There is no perimeter. Is IPSec finally taking off or is SSL winning out? Is anti-virus scanners finally dying? Attend this session to find out the latest security defense trends.

The Rich Interactive Application (RIA) Platform: The Importance of User Experience in Today’s Applications - Paul Laberge

With the advent of increasingly more robust user interface and communications technologies, there has been an unprecedented focus on user experience factors in application design and development. With greater demand for workforce productivity, understanding how to use technology to make the end user experience better has become a critical component to many application architecture decisions. This session will provide you with an overview of what user experience means in the context of application architecture and how you can leverage Microsoft’s technology platform to build a strong connection between the user and your applications.

Opportunistic Development vs. Systematic Development - Joel Quimper

There is a tension in enterprises between opportunistic development and systematic development. This tension will increase if end-user programming becomes common. End users will not be content to wait for the systematic development teams to develop or modify solutions. In this tound table, I would like us to reflect on the subject as a group.

Enterprise Ready Data Platform - Ram Ramanathan

Attend this session to learn how SQL Server 2008 provides a trusted data platform for you mission critical applications. We will cover the new security and compliance features enabling you to protect your data. We will also cover new scalability and high availability features enabling you to make your data always available. We will end with the new manageability features that enable you to manage this platform more easily while extending your reach, enterprise wide to all databases within organization.

Decreasing the Number of Admins - Rogers Grimes

Everyone knows that decreasing the number of active administrators is one of the best ways to defeat current malware and hackers, yet over 90% of businesses allow all their end-users to run as local administrators. Contrary to popular belief, Windows Vista doesn’t really bring much to the game that wasn’t available in XP Pro. Attend this session and learn the 20 ways customers can use to reduce the number of administrators in their environment. This session will cover the methodology to use and spreadsheets and templates that you can share with your customers to help with this security journey.

Accessing Data on the MS Platform - Jamie Wakeam

The .NET Framework is now at version 3.5 and there are many different ways the framework provides access to your data. This session will deliver an introduction to some of the different data access technologies like LINQ, Entity Framework, ADO.Net Data Services and other future improvements being made to the .Net Framework. This session will provide an introduction to these technologies through demos and slides and will provide resources where deeper knowledge can be gained.

Dynamic IT at Microsoft: Intimate and Interactive - Barry Briggs

This interactive session preceding Barry's keynote on the same subject will allow a dynamic exchange of information on how Microsoft delivers "Dynamic IT". Attend this session and get the opportunity to have an interactive discussion with the Chief Architect and CTO of Microsoft's IT organization.

Interoperability - Joel Quimper

Few organizations exist that have completely homogonous platforms in place today, and moving forward the ability to use best of breed solutions that can interoperate with existing platforms is essential. Microsoft recognizes that in an increasingly interconnected computing landscape, enabling interoperability between products from different vendors has become more important than ever. This session will look at various options for integrating solutions and particularly using Service Oriented Architectures in order to achieve effective interoperability between a wide range of products to meet customer needs.

SQL Server 2008 Infrastructure Management - Scott Stauffer

There are many new features in SQL Server 2008 that fall under the heading of Server Management, but in this 1 hour timeslot Scott will cover two: The Resource Governor and Policy Based Management. For both of these topics he will provide live demonstrations to accompany the conceptual architecture.

ESB, Integration and SOA Platform - Peter Kelcey

As organizations look to Service Oriented Architectures to help them deliver my flexible, agile and responsive IT environments, the Enterprise Service Bus has emerged as a key element in achieving this goal. In this session, we'll discuss Microsoft's Enterprise Service Bus guidance and how it allows an organization to build a dynamic, flexible and practical ESB.

Office Business Applications: Intimate and Interactive - Juergen Daiberl and Steve Fox

This interactive session provides a forum for discussing how Line-of-Business System can be integrated into Office using Web Services, Visual Studio, and Visual Studio for Office. Join us in a roundtable designed for sharing challenges and diving deep into specific questions on SAP and Peoplesoft integration.

Integrating LOBs into OBAs - Juergen Daiberl and Steve Fox

This session provides an overview of how Line-of-Business System like SAP & PeopleSoft can be integrated into Office using Web Services, Visual Studio, and Visual Studio for Office.

Anywhere Access; the Microsoft Security Strategy - Bruce Cowper

The convergence of technology, devices and lifestyles means organizations are looking at dealing with accessing information from anywhere, on any device at any time. The big question is how we achieve this and maintain security, management and the user experience? In this session we take a look at the anywhere access vision and the Microsoft Security Strategy with a view to understanding how the components come together for a holistic approach to security.

Building Solutions Effectively using Visual Studio Team System 2008 - Adam Gallant

In this session, we’ll focus on using Visual Studio Team System 2008 in building solutions. We will cover off the use of Team Foundation Server, as well as the use of client tools to enforce architectural and quality standards across the team.

Directions in Modeling - David Trowbridge

Models are a proven way to manage complexity in the enterprise, yet modeling strategies vary widely in practice. Microsoft has a vision of providing rich set of modeling tools within Visual Studio Team System to model the target state of an architecture and then integrate these models with a robust architectural discovery capability linked directly to implementation. This will allow developers to evolve their codebase in an iterative and incremental fashion while enabling architects to communicate and validate standard designs and patterns within their enterprise. In addition, information from these models will flow to other team members on the project, such as testers, project managers and database professionals connected by Team Foundation Server. Come and share your thoughts and feedback on this topic so critical to enterprise software construction.

Web 2.0: Understanding the Trends and Architecting for Collaboration - Paul Laberge

Web 2.0 is likely one of the most confusing terms in today’s technology landscape. Despite the loose definition surrounding Web 2.0, there are common aspects to Web 2.0 applications today the most important of which are the concepts collaboration and community. This session will discuss what community and collaboration in today’s web applications mean, how this is pertinent to business applications and how to approach Web 2.0 from an architectural perspective.

Virtualize the Datacenter - Nelson and Danielle Ruest

With the recent release of Hyper-V RC0, Microsoft is on track for the delivery of its enterprise-class virtualization technology and will make it available for Windows Server 2008 customers in 2008. This will herald a new age for the Windows Datacenter. But, now that virtualization has become a mainstream technology, organizations need to move beyond simple server consolidation and begin to look at how they will build, then manage, entire virtual infrastructures. First, they need to understand the impact of virtualization at the server and the desktop level. Then, look to how virtualization can improve business continuity scenarios. Building a virtual datacenter is more than just virtualizing every machine within it. You need to plan the construction of your hardware resource pool including server, storage and network resources. You also need to look at how virtualization can improve remote office scenarios. Finally, your virtual datacenter will need to build on multiple virtualization layers: server, desktop, application and more. This session provides a comprehensive overview of the impact virtualization can have in your datacenter and shows you just how profitable it can be to transform your physical structures into 21st century virtual infrastructures.

Building Solutions for the Modern Web with the Microsoft Platform - Adam Gallant

In this session, we will cover the use of the .net framework 3.5 technologies in building solutions that target web scenarios. We will include the use of ASP.NET AJAX and related technologies, as well as cover data scenarios, focussing on LinQ and the ADO.NET Entity framework in serving these web scenarios. We will also cover the use of JSON and REST versus SOAP.

IT Architect Skills in the Next Decade - Dave Remmer

The demands on our IT infrastructures are changing, and as leaders in the development of those architectures we need to develop new skills to insure successful outcomes. Come participate in an interactive discussion of the kinds of skills that we will need to develop in order to be effective as Architects in the coming decade.