Welcome Address: A Country, a Region, a World of Convergence

Chaired by: Crawford Del Prete, Senior Vice President, Research, IDC and Frank Gens, Senior Vice President, Research, IDC

The profound changes in the nature of technology and the impact of globalization are the major driving forces behind the rise of new powerful business models based on community, collaboration, and self-organization rather than on hierarchy and control. In this session renowned thought-leaders will discuss and debate how convergence and globalization is revolutionizing businesses and how companies that embrace the new reality – the Enterprise 2.0 - will compete dynamically; and those that don’t will fail.

Does something so socially dynamic as "MySpace" really have a place in the office?

Without question, the company's that are the most networked today are the ones that will be the most successful tomorrow. We work in a "real time" age, where knowledge and action must happen simultaneously. The more connected we are inside and outside our companies, the more strategic, responsive and proactive we will be. Today's technology can help, but how it's applied is the real key.

Chaired by: Pim Bilderbeek, VP European Telecommunications & Networking Consulting, IDC EMEA and Dan Bieler, Consulting Director, European Telecommunications and Networking, IDC

Convergence is leading to new integrated ICT solutions that drive a powerful combination of connectivity, collaboration, communication and openness. This new “2.0” era is helping governments and companies respond to the increasing requirements of our globalized reality by reshaping the traditional boundaries. In this session industry thought leaders will address and debate:

• The significant bottom line impact of proper “IT & C” integration – creating a coherent, open and collaborative ICT environment
• The pros and cons of managed services. A credible alternative to IS outsourcing?  What are the cost and flexibility benefits associated with Managed IT/Comms?
• The benefits of having the new infrastructure managed proactively in a multi-annual contract.

This presentation discusses and defines integrated ICT solutions, with and emphasis on the communications and collaboration aspects. It highlights the difference between human communications and computerized business process and discusses virtualization and convergence in the context of communications and collaboration. The way people work in the enterprise is changing, this will have its impact on how enterprises will structure and acquire converged communications and collaboration solutions in order to be more agile, efficient, and competitive.

In today's challenging business environment, IT and TC sectors under constant buzzword attack. The business value of emerging themes however is not driven by hypes, but through the symbiotic fit of technology evolution and user demand.

In todays markets the boundaries between IT and Telecommunications are increasingly blurring across the technology stack. The main tangible benefits of this development are superior service- and process-level SLAs and true dynamic service models. The former is a logical step in the short history of SLA developments. The latter is the direct outcome of the very nature of utility models. These ICT convergence benefits leverage the impact of the CIO agenda by enabling flexible collaboration within and across businesses while keeping cost under control. As a result, ICT convergence is getting real - and it is here to stay.

Examples of end-to-end ICT applications like a true collaborative engineering environment show that common processes and tools across technology silos are the key ingredients necessary for capturing the value of ICT. Accordingly, providers need to prepare to respond to the ICT challenge, typically by developing capabilities around the core of its heritage. ICT users need to be aware of these ermeging capabilibities when making their sourcing decisions.

Personal and business communications capabilities are constantly shifting. Consumers are getting more and more hooked to Web 2.0 services allowing knowledge sharing across all boundaries and forming agile ad-hoc communities. At the same time, enterprises are confronted with trends such as globalization and mobility which are revolutionizing their business. Existing rigid silos of fragmented communications and cost intensive IT also challange companies with staying competitive and managing change.

Unification of Voice, Data and IT into a single simple concept -Open Communications– will fundamentally shift the principles of an enterprise business architecture, as Web 2.0 has done for the internet and the consumer space. Enterprise 2.0 architectures will allow unifying information and user experiences across wireless, fixed and enterprise networks – not just to reduce costs, but to grasp new business opportunities and promote more effective and agile ways of working.

Session 3 — Plenary Session
Mapping Out a Vision to Create a Business-Oriented Infrastructure

Chaired by: Martin Hingley, IDC EMEA Chief Research Officer, and Vernon Turner, Group Vice President & General Manager Enterprise Computing, IDC

IDC's findings into the next-generation datacenter show that there are huge competitive opportunities and risks for CIOs who want to be leaders in delivering IT or infrastructure as a service. To unlock the business value, the IT agenda needs to address:

• A datacenter infrastructure maturity model
• A timeline and benefit-driven virtualization roadmap that embraces all aspects of IT
• Rules for establishing a "lean" IT organization
• Identifying the benefits of services-oriented enterprise

Many of today's enterprise data center's have become locked in rigid, high-cost silos that inhibit IT's ability to better serve the needs of the business. IT needs to deliver more innovation and growth that is in lock-step with the business drivers - new services, new applications, and new ways to do business. Yet, on average, IT spends about 70% of the overall IT budget simply maintaining and managing the existing environment. IT needs to address its many challenges and evolve how it develops, operates, and manages the services that it delivers to its customers and users. A key aspect of that evolution is the move towards a next-generation data center that's designed to lower the cost of operations, increase the speed of change and responsiveness, and deliver on quality of service. And, ultimately, better business outcomes. This session will provide a blueprint around the key customer initiatives, deployable today, for leading that evolution towards a next generation IT infrastructure, and becoming the supply chain for IT services.

Session A, B and C - Special Interest Tracks
These industry focused sessions are not structured around the technology segments but around innovative applications and solutions enabled by technology convergence.

Chaired by: Frank Gens, Senior Vice President, Research, IDC and Crawford Del Prete, Senior Vice President, Research, IDC

In general, the traditional boundaries in terms of what is internal and external to the company are becoming much more blurred. The traditionally sharp distinction between markets and firms is giving way to a multiplicity of organizational forms that don't necessarily have the traditionally sharp boundaries. These changes make most executives consider how to best organize to compete most effectively in the new environment. In this session, challenges and opportunities in relation to Enterprise 2.0 Management Strategies will be addressed:

• What do you want to have inside the boundary of your own company versus what you want to have outside?
• Enterprise 2.0 environment to be best achieved bottom-up or top-down?
• How are companies managing and profiting from "collective intelligence" — open and better-facilitated collaboration with customers and partners?

Enterprise 2.0: A Progress Report

Enterprise 2.0 is about year and a half old -- how mature is it? In this talk, Prof. McAfee will talk about the latest technologies, trends, and approaches in the area of emergent corporate innovation and collaboration. He will present case studies and and research results to illustrate important phenomena, and will offer predictions about how Enterprise 2.0 is likely to unfold in the near future.

The Future-State CIO

Leading global CIOs in the 500+ member CIO Executive Council began a project over a year ago to clearly articulate the future role of the CIO at its highest value and most strategic potential and to advance both business and the community of CIOs toward this potential.  Mr. Hall, Founder and General Manager of the Council, will share the findings from this extraordinary project, a project that probes the complexity of the most rapidly evolving role in business.

Chaired by: Thomas Meyer, Vice President, EMEA Systems and Infrastructure Solutions, IDC and Martin Hingley, Chief Research Officer, IDC

Green IT