Storage Expo, to be held at London's Olympia from 18 to
19 October, is the event to attend to catch up with the latest
storage technology and services available for your business and
gives you the chance to compare a range of systems from different
suppliers.
If you want to keep up with the expansion in data with the
latest storage technology and services, or you have to juggle
shrinking budgets and growing data storage demands, Storage Expo
2006 is the event for you.
It is the UK's only dedicated data storage event, where visitors
can compare a comprehensive range of systems from the leading
suppliers. The show is now in its sixth year, with more than 100
exhibitors and an unrivalled education programme addressing key
storage issues.
This year there is a great diversity of leading-edge keynote
addresses given by industry experts. Here is a selection of what is
on offer:
Opening address: Archive or delete? The politics of data
retention
Chair: Philip Virgo, secretary general of Eurim and
strategic adviser to IMIS
10.15am, 18 October
This keynote session will summarise the conflicting legislation
surrounding data retention and look at what is already in place or
on the way.
It will address the balancing act facing storage professionals
on the need to use systems engineering to assess whether regulatory
proposals will reduce the risk to customers or simply impose new
overheads, encourage unofficial workarounds and open up new
risks.
It will illustrate how well publicised routines for rigorous
data protection can be used as a powerful marketing tool in a world
of phishing and identity theft.
According to Virgo, most regulatory proposals are based on
ignorance, and organisations need to be active to ensure better and
more relevant regulation.
Getting virtualisation motoring for your
company
Chair: Frank Timons, research analyst at Robert W
Baird
11.15am, 18 October
The panel of speakers for this presentation includes Paul
Thomas, data services manager at Britannia Building Society, and
David France, IT director at Honda Formula 1.
This session will use diverse case studies to illustrate the
benefits of virtualisation to an organisation, and demonstrate that
independent of data type, there are common lessons that can be
extracted which you can exploit for sophisticated orchestration of
your storage network.
Storage, disaster recovery and business
continuity
Chair: John Abbott, chief analyst, The 451 Group
12.45pm, 18 October
Abbott discusses some of the hottest issues facing organisations
with Colin Everett, head of IT strategy and architecture at Lloyds
TSB FMD, and Nizam Ali, IT consultant at Arup.
In light of recent high profile disasters, the importance of
effective recovery has never been higher on the storage agenda.
This session will draw from case studies of real disaster events
and show what measures companies can put in place to mitigate the
potential impact of data storage loss.
Does your storage stand up to legal
scrutiny?
Chair: Jon Fell, lawyer, Pinsent Masons
2.15pm, 18 October
The wave of compliance regulations means your system can no
longer rely on standards and received business practice as a code
for storage protocol.
This session will give an overview of the processes that your
business has to have in place to ensure compliant function.
Information lifecycle management
Panel of speakers: Atle Skjekkeland, vice-president, AIIM
Ross McCarroll, UK chair of SNIA
3.30pm, 18 October
This session will explore the true meanings of information
lifecycle management (ILM) and strategic record management.
Skjekkeland said, "ILM and ECM are big terms that make big
promises, and you risk losing your executives and users in a lot of
pitfalls during your project. We will therefore try to address the
'why', 'what' and 'how' of ILM and ECM."
What is more important - speed, scalability, capacity or
cost?
Chair: James Hayes, editor,Information Professional
10am, 19 October
This session uses case study analysis to explore the relative
importance of the factors you need to consider when setting up your
storage network.
Hayes said, "When specifying enterprise networks, you cannot
have it all. Demands placed on infrastructures mean there has to be
a trade-off between key factors that define functionality.
How do leading IT practitioners decide which factor is more
important? And how do they balance the technological and business
requirements when calibrating performance?"
Standing on the shoulders of giants - the future of
storage technology
Chair: John Riley, managing editor, Computer Weekly
11.15am, 19 October
This session will offer an overview of the storage landscape,
and will analyse the key issues in storage technology, and what the
issues, solutions and innovations of the future will be.
One member of the panel of speakers is Hu Yoshida,
vice-president and chief technology officer at Hitachi Data
Systems. He said, "Managing data has become, for many companies,
their primary IT challenge. But the emphasis has long since shifted
from efficient storage and retrieval to how storage solutions can
actually improve business efficiency.
"However, as storage takes centre stage issues of simplicity,
security, compliance and environmental impact must also be
addressed.
"Simplification is emerging as a major storage trend with
companies demanding dynamic, flexible IT systems to support their
ever changing business needs.
"They seek to reduce complexity while sweating existing assets.
The environmental impact of storage will also feature as firms look
to reduce energy costs and emissions."
Storage security - moving from network to datacentric
security
Chair: Brian McKenna, editor, Infosecurity Today
12.30pm, 19 October
Comprehensive data security cannot be viewed from a
network-centric perspective - firewalls, intrusion detection,
filtering and anti-malware may reduce the impact of external
threats - but realistically thisw is only a small fraction of the
picture.
Sophisticated data security also requires people-centric
protection such as authentication and authorisation control, and
datacentric protection such as encryption.
Today only 30% of companies employ satisfactory datacentric
protection - this session will discuss the elements you need to
ensure storage security.
Building on legacy technology to provide future-proof
storage
Chair: Jon Collins, principal analyst, Macehiter
Ward-Dutton
2pm, 19 October
The evolution of your storage facility is driven by capacity and
regulatory compliance. This session will explore the issues
concerned with this complex procedure and suggest methods that can
be employed to ensure that the decisions you make today are still
functional in the future.
Collins said, "It can be quite easy to lose track of the
fundamentals of storage management, assuming that the fundamentals
are already solved and the next steps are straightforward, if only
people would listen.
"Storage is far more complex than is generally realised: today's
CIOs and IT managers are looking to harness that complexity at the
same time as giving them a firm foundation for the future.
"At Storage Expo, advice tends to be practical and pragmatic.
Attendees can benefit from the experiences of their peers while
comparing those with the solutions offered by suppliers, giving
them a far greater sense of what would work in their own
environments."
David Lipsey, information systems infrastructure manager at
Ordnance Survey, and a member of the panel of speakers, said, "The
ongoing project to digitally photograph the UK from the air
presented us with a storage challenge that would need us to access
terabytes of large files far into the future without overloading
our infrastructure.
"Overcoming this challenge has provided us with a blueprint for
our archiving needs moving forward. In the keynote, I will be
sharing the lessons we learned as valuable pointers for all of us
facing the growing mountains of data."
David Martin, group technical internet development manager at
Johnston Press and also on the speakers' panel, said, "Building on
legacy technology providing futureproof storage - the most
challenging term here is 'future' followed by 'legacy'.
"In our internet platform with terabytes of data, agile
applications, ferocious growth rates and regular business
acquisition, the future is difficult to read.
"Understanding capacity, utilisation and designing flexibility
and cost-effective scalability on common standards goes a long way
to rise to the challenge."
Deal or no deal: storage special
Judging panel: Jon Collins, principal analyst, Macehiter
Ward-Dutton Chris Howard, vice-president and service director,
Application Platform Strategies, Burton Group Dale Nix, managing
director, Chapman Nix
3.15pm, 19 October
In this special session, five companies with some of the most
innovative products in the storage market will cold pitch to a
panel of the leading experts in the field.
Expand Networks, Iron Mountain, Promise Technology Europe,
StoreAge Networking Technologies, Texas Memory Systems and WysDM
Software will be taking part.
With no slides, no props and nowhere to hide, the product
specialists will be given five minutes each to tell the panel why
their product is superior to the rest.
They will then face an inquisition from the panel, who will pull
no punches to ensure that they root out the best product. At the
end of the session, the panel will decide on a winner.
Jim McDonald, chief technical officer at WysDM, is ready to meet
the challenge. "Integration of backup reports with business and
asset databases is providing customers with new insights into their
compliance with data retention requirements," he said.
"Separate groups within a company can now obtain real-time
reports on the protection of their applications, their data and
their business.
"Expect to see all of the major data protection management
players on display at Storage Expo," said McDonald.
Documation UK focuses on content management
This year, the show will be co-located alongside Documation UK,
the only exhibition to focus on the latest systems and technology
for all your information, content and document management
issues.
Documation UK, in partnership with AIIM, the leading enterprise
content management (ECM) association, is the largest dedicated
exhibition of its kind in the UK, covering end-to-end enterprise
content management.
It will address all the latest issues in information management
including web content management, e-mail management, document and
records management, information capture, scanning, imaging and
business processes.
It also features a free education programme addressing today's
key information management issues. This is an essential event for
anyone involved in managing their business information efficiently
and cost effectively.
Now in its second year, Documation UK offers a diverse range of
new and innovative products and services from over 40 exhibitors on
the show floor at Olympia 2, from 18 to 19 October.
To find out more about this year's Storage Expo or to register
for the show visit
www.storage-expo.com