Steve will describe recent research conducted for the RCGA by Market Street Services, which identifies key industry cluster strengths and challenges, and directions for the region, going forward. There are a number of positive aspects about the region that are attractive for global companies to consider locating their operations to this area. There are also areas where improvement is needed. Steve will review the RCGA’s plans for working with businesses, government and community leaders in the area in order to accentuate the region’s strengths. The plan also considers ways to improve areas where the perception and/or reality of the region may fall short. These initiatives being formulated and lead by the RCGA will have a significant impact on the region’s economy both in the short and long term.

sponsored by Information Builders

Bhavani Amirthalingam
Vice President, Information Technology
World Wide Technology, Inc.

Access to information is key to any successful business process. At World Wide Technology, we make this a competitive advantage for our Customers and Partners, as well as our Internal Employees. In this session, learn how World Wide Technology uses the latest Business Intelligence Technology to put the consumers of the data in the driver seat. The focus is on the right information, to the right people, at the right time.

View the latest conference agenda.

The Joint Deployment and Distribution Enterprise (JDDE) requires a flexible IT framework that reduces the complexity and number of interfaces within the enterprise through the implementation of common prescribed interfaces with authoritative information sources (build once, use by all).

The Distribution Process Owner (DPO) Enterprise consists of a resource-constrained environment where funding is diminishing over time, while the number of required capabilities is continuously increasing. The IT computing environment has hundreds of monolithic point-to-point systems with thousands of interfaces that are being maintained at very high cost to the government. To resolve this problem statement, the Distribution Portfolio Manager (DPfM) has established an improved IT portfolio investment decision process (Corporate Governance Process (CGP)). Governance is key in this DPO-wide Transformation, and DPfM is employing a rigorous portfolio management methodology and investment strategy to develop essential services and capabilities for the Warfighter.

The DPO CSV is a transformational initiative that aids the DPO with identification, construction, and fielding of core capabilities (i.e. services). These new services are focused around DPO value chains and are used by warfighters and other customers to request, fulfill and track the distribution of people, equipment, and materiel in support of operations.

• The DPO services are accessible through prescribed interfaces to ensure information completeness and consistency in order to enable the DPO and our JDDE National partners to perform distribution functions.
• Users can access the DPO capabilities through a common portal capability that is focused on capabilities and work flow in lieu of systems.
• CSV allows for an agile, loosely coupled, standardized way of doing business that guarantees faster, less costly development of capabilities in support of the warfighter.
• DPO’s CSV focuses on breaking down silos, eliminating duplication, and enabling convergence of capabilities within the DPO area of responsibility.

Linda Kurland
SVP Operations – Skilled Nursing Division
RehabCare
Imagine being able to deliver training to your workforce when they need it, in the palm of their hands! Sound too good to be true? Think again…

A leading national rehabilitation services provider needed to train its staff of 15,000 practitioners dispersed across more than 1,280 geographic locations on new practice software and a new mobile point of service device, the Apple iPod Touch.

Learn how RehabCare partnered with a learning services organization to create a method for training employees remotely. The learning solution included simulation exercises for delivery on the iPod Touch that allowed the practitioners to rehearse using their application and the Touch device through real-world scenarios which improved their speed and accuracy with the new software. The outcome – a revolutionary, high touch training solution delivered on a mobile platform with quantifiable results!

View the latest conference agenda.

Jan Stovall
Department Leader, IS Enterprise Storage
Edward Jones

Jeffrey Kennedy
Manager of Computer Operations
Brown Shoe Company

Kent Hillman
Computer Information Technology Specialist
State of Missouri Office of Administration SDC

Data centers are being challenged from both ends: on one side, demand for more storage capacity is growing; on the other, costs for increased power, cooling and facilities are escalating. Customers are demanding innovative, environmentally friendly solutions to streamline IT operations and control costs. At no time in recent memory is enterprise cost-containment a bigger factor, given our uncertain economic climate.
Please join our panel for an informative discussion covering these key areas:

• Present and Future Data Center challenges
• Implementing more environmentally- friendly data centers
• Complying with environmental and compliance directives
• Driving down data center power, cooling and facilities costs
• Tiered Storage and Virtualization Technology Case Studies

View the latest conference agenda.

Manuel Cerqueiro
eBusiness Director
Bunge Limited
Bunge is a leading global agribusiness and food company with over 25,000 employees at more than 450 facilities in 30 countries. A Fortune 500 company, with over $52 billion in annual revenue, Bunge is a global leader in fertilizer and food products.

In this session, learn how Bunge created a unified yet decentralized intranet portal environment for Bunge’s semi-autonomous operating companies around the globe to distribute news, share information, build/run business applications and integrate with Bunge’s back-end systems in a centralized environment while overcoming the challenges of serving a global user base.   In this session also learn how Bunge’s intranet portal became the default homepage for nearly all employees worldwide and how it has helped Bunge improve employee productivity, reduce operating costs and enable business groups around the globe to quickly create and share agile, low cost business applications.

View the latest conference agenda.

Dan Lutter
Director Field Technology Services
Advocate Health Care
Advocate Health Care is recognized as one of the top integrated health care systems in the country. With over 18,000 users to manage, Advocate Health Care has achieved a growth in company size and ever increasing demands on technology, without growth in IT resources.  Join this session to discover how you can improve your organization’s competitive advantage by implementing management best practices, increase customer satisfaction, and eliminate avoidable IT support costs through standardizing of your existing environment.

Dan Lutter, Director Field Technology Services for Advocate Health Care will share their success story in achieving simplified management of IT systems; reduction in costs through software distribution, patch management, and process automation amongst other key areas; and how motivated IT staff has boosted improved service levels.

Join this interactive session and informative session for an insight into the business advantages to be gained, the latest technologies from LANDesk Software that will enable you to achieve this, and equally importantly the quantifiable cost savings you can demonstrate.

View the latest conference agenda.

Jim Holman
Director, PMO
Charter Communications
Managing IT for business value starts with understanding what the business needs and why.  This is difficult when there are multiple “front doors” to IT – a mash-up of formal and informal ways to request resources through projects (strategic demand), break-fix and changes (operational demand), and everyday requests (tactical demand).  Learn how Charter Communications is integrating service and portfolio management processes to funnel business demand and improve service quality, cost, function and benefit.

View the latest conference agenda.

Debe Gash
Vice President & CIO
Saint Luke’s Health Systems
IT cost transparency has enabled Saint Luke’s Health System to systematically find new opportunities to maximize IT investment, reduce cost, improve IT ROI and provide visibility into the total cost of IT.

Objectives:

• Analyze methods to allocate IT costs to all departments within an organization for accurate IT costs
• Calculate an accurate ROI of proposed IT projects
• Implement IT cost transparency solutions to benchmark IT performance and unit-cost competitiveness
• Explain the value of IT to business leaders

View the latest conference agenda.

Wesley M. Devine
Distinguished Engineer, Master Inventor, Member of IBM Academy of Technology
IBM
Cloud – Isn’t this just an old concept with new marketing hype? What is real? During our time together we will dispel the vapor around cloud, discuss how businesses are implementing cloud computing and how you can take immediate actions to build a more dynamic infrastructure to reduce costs, improve service delivery and enable business innovation. CIO Viewpoint of Cloud Computing:

• What are the emerging cloud delivery models and are all vendors speaking the same language?
• What business workloads should and should not be transitioned to the cloud and why?
• What do I need to consider re: security, virtualization, service continuity, availability and complexity?
• What are the benefits and the potential positive financial impact to my business?
• Which companies are early adopters of cloud technologies?
• What are the steps to implementing cloud technologies?
• Open discussion and answers to your cloud questions

View the latest conference agenda.