In global business today, more and more organizations must be able to function fully anywhere, anytime. As one of the pioneers in cloud technologies, AMD today runs a high-performance computing cloud that supports thousands of engineers worldwide with approximately 40 million jobs executed monthly. As an integral part of how AMD is able to meet expanding demand for IT resources, the cloud offers immense flexibility while helping to cut overall spending on hardware and data centers. In this Q&A interview with CIO's Editor in Chief, AMD CIO Mike Wolfe will talk about cost effective ways for IT to drive innovation within an organization and create business value.

An increasingly mobile workforce, a growing influx of consumer devices at work and the rapid transition of cloud computing from buzzword to reality are all having a huge impact on business value delivery in today's enterprise. These trends bring with them tensions in the CIO role around enablement vs. security, agility vs. integration, and business vs. IT in technology resource control. In this engaging discussion with prominent Houston CIOs and the CSO of Parsons Corp., you’ll hear how their companies are managing these tensions as they update their technology roadmaps, compete for new customer bases and respond more quickly to the demands of business in a hyper-connected mobile world.

Most enterprises have worked with WAN Optimization by now, but not everyone is aware of the caveats and gotcha’s that can lower your ROI and reduce the potential of your WAN. Debunk the myth that WAN upgrades are necessary at 60% utilization – run your WAN at near 100% utilization while improving end user experience. Expose the falsehood that all optimization is good – learn about some dangerous practices that can result in friendly fire. Reveal the shortsightedness of managing networks by applications – the new world is about smart phones, tablets, and managing by the user. Get ready for some straight talk.

Every organization struggles to balance budget pressures with business initiatives, so CIOs must find creative ways to wring additional dollars out of IT organizations and assets. Enterprise License Optimization can help you do exactly that by driving down license and maintenance costs. Come hear more about this highly practical, next-generation approach to managing your strategic software assets.