These facilitated discussion groups are set up to get the conversations rolling quickly and get the ideas flowing freely. Each session is moderated by a CW staff member or partner. We'll fire off a few questions to get started, then guide the conversation and generate best practices and great ideas.

Join us for a roundtable discussion on mobile and wireless topics that affect your organization, from Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies and practices to your personal wish-list for what new features vendors need to add to tablets and smartphones or what improvements are needed for Mobile Device Management software in the next two years. Has the consumerization trend for handhelds peaked or are security, management, and user policies more thorny concerns than ever?

IT leaders are increasingly turning to cloud computing as a way of providing more flexibility and responsiveness to the business, a method of modernizing the IT infrastructure, a cost-savings mechanism, or all of the above. But cloud also poses challenges, including management, governance, integration, infrastructure preparedness and licensing issues.

We'll talk about the state of cloud today – where you and your peers are finding value in the cloud, how you're positioning cloud services to your business constituencies, and how you're meeting some of the challenges. Whether you're just dipping a toe into one cloud application or are going with an entire cloud-based infrastructure, come to this discussion prepared to share and learn.

Computerworld welcomes you to the Premier 100 Dude Ranch!  Enjoy the open air of the West with your colleagues while savoring the tastes of bbq ribs, made-from-scratch chili and succulent corn on the cob.  The starry filled skies of Arizona will complete the backdrop for great conversations with your peers as we get the action started.

The pace of IT innovations has increased dramatically. Once IT consumers have tasted new capabilities that are delivered quickly and work well, they want more, they want it even faster, and they want it customized. The pace is accelerating and driving a possibly insatiable demand for IT.   The goal is to work with anyone from anywhere using any data and any device at any time.  OK. I’m in!  But what does it mean? This talk will discuss the current and future growth areas of IT, with real world examples, which will guide us towards a future that is truly limitless.

Learn how this Premier 100 IT leader and his team worked through internecine politics, squabbles over intellectual property and other thorny collaboration issues to consolidate, digitize and monetize over 1 million hours of historical video footage, creating a brand new revenue stream and launching the broadcasting giant into the brave new world of digital publishing. This is one of the largest historical video and audio collections of the human race in existence. And now, it’s yours, downloadable online and payable by credit card.

Cloud, SaaS and consumer technologies and services offer an unprecedented opportunity to implement a highly flexible, more responsive and intelligent IIT architecture that affords a competitive advantage. Yet rarely is it a green field process. Legacy applications and processes make it more like changing out an engine in mid-flight. Hear how these IT leaders are bringing to life 21st Century intelligent architectures while continuously delivering business value.

The twin mega-trends of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and the consumerization of IT go directly against corporations’ desire to limit security exposures and keep TCO low.  In this session, Rich Cheston, Chief Technology Architect at Lenovo, will discuss approaches to meeting both needs plus drill down on how and where cloud computing can ultimately, resolve these seemingly mutually exclusive goals streamline the enablement of BYOD. Rich’s perspective is based real-life lessons learned through hands-on experience during his extensive engagements with Lenovo's corporate customers.

Join VMware CTO Steve Herrod and one of VMware's senior customer strategists, Kris Baritt, as they discuss specific case studies on IT and business transformation in the cloud era. You'll learn about their customers' adoption of virtualization and cloud technologies, the evolution of their IT organizations and processes, and how it ultimately reaches their employees and customers in the Post-PC era.

Verizon Enterprise Solutions Group needed to transform the Sales Operations supporting its global and  multinational customers. In this presentation, Verizon will showcase how an innovative customer knowledge base system coupled with a cloud based CRM solution now puts everything that sales and executives need at their fingertips – available anytime, anywhere. This has bolstered business value by streamlining the sales process, enabling significant collaboration across the organization and providing instant access to a wealth of information that previously was very difficult to obtain. Hosted by Teradata

Feel free to join lunch table discussions on topics such as:

The cloud is changing everything about your IT environment: where you run things applications, how you write applications, and how those applications are delivered to your users. This IT transformation is driving how business will compete in 2012 and beyond. VMware is on this journey with you, and Steve will present his recommendations for how to best navigate this new computing world and how to manage your infrastructure to empower a more collaborative, productive workforce.

Big data. Social. Mobile. Cloud. Real time. Self-service. With the rapid pace of change in the technology landscape, ever-rising user expectations plus escalating demand for consumerization of IT, meeting business intelligence goals is harder than ever. IT is often buried beneath a growing reporting backlog and unrealistic user expectations, struggling to balance agility with reliability. This presentation will explore the decision making needs and models of business users and outline a new user-driven approach to BI. At the same time, it will outline the changing role and needs of IT in balancing the desire to enable self-service BI while also maintaining strong governance and reliability of the information.

Enterprise employees are used to accessing personal information on smartphones and tablets, anytime and anywhere; now they want that same type of access to enterprise data. As more consumer devices make their way into businesses, IT organizations are struggling to ensure that corporate data remains safe. Securing enterprise information is hard enough when the company owns the device, but it becomes increasingly difficult to keep it safe when employees are accessing it using their personal devices. This presentation will outline the variety of challenges faced by CIOs when allowing users to use their personal mobile devices to access corporate data and a comparison of varying approaches to solving these problems.

From the first days of the Obama Administration, it was clear that Executive Office of the President (EOP) IT systems were struggling to maintain stable and secure operations due to an aging infrastructure: Over 82% of IT assets were “end-of-life” and no longer supported by their manufacturer. Brook Colangelo developed and executed a three-part modernization plan for the White House complex: stabilize the core, mobilize the workforce, and optimize IT systems. Colangelo recruited four of the best and brightest computer science students from around the country to form the EOP’s first SoftWare Automation and Technology (SWAT) Team in summer 2011. The SWAT Team interns utilized an agile development approach and cloud-based rapid development platforms to tackle more than 40 projects for the EOP, including the creation of surveys, dashboards, and management systems.  The work of the SWAT Team is a quintessential example of the way that Colangelo has revolutionized OCIO’s business process support and software development services.

The BlueCross BlueShield System consists of 39 independently licensed Health Care Payers or Plans plus numerous other entities, linked together via technology provided by The Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association. All told, BCBS touches one in three Americans with various products and services, generating a formidable volume of data in the process of serving these 100 million members. In this deep-dive presentation, CIO Doug Porter and Chief Architect Plamen Petrov will detail the strategies, technologies and adoption techniques they used to create the world’s largest healthcare data warehouse and standalone health-care data analysis service known as Blue Health Intelligence.

Experience the beautiful tastes of the Sonoran Desert as you sample delectable food creations that have been locally grown and produced.  You’ll find everything from the expected, prickly pear cactus products and mouthwatering BBQ spices, to the unexpected, such as an olive mill.  High Spirits, a local distillery in Flagstaff, will be on hand for you to sample their unique handcrafted items including chili infused vodka and mesquite whiskey. Don’t miss this chance to join your peers and reflect on the day’s sessions while tasting the flavors of Arizona.

Sponsored by Box

Thomas Edison once said “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”  The fear of failure prevents people from taking the bold and innovative steps that will truly transform their organizations.  Yet significant, sustainable and positive change most often comes through the best, if not hardest, lesson of all – our failures.  So how can you use this to your advantage and what does this mean for the public and private sectors?  Kristin Russell shares her experiences and will provide you with action steps that will get you started on welcoming failure in your journey towards success.

Doing business globally presents both opportunities and challenges for IT leaders. Companies may advertise that they are global yet their operations across the world vary widely because no two countries are alike. The goal may be a single technology platform across multiple locations worldwide, yet one size certainly doesn’t fit all. How do you do low-cost scanning, for example – something that is done on a regular basis in the U.S. – in India, China or Brazil where the cost of a scanner may be prohibitive? How does an enterprise architecture group get everyone thinking the same way? These are just some of the issues our panel of IT leaders will tackle as they candidly discuss their collective experiences with global business and IT.

Mobility is a disruptive force creating major demand for cloud offerings. In the 2012 IDG report on iPads for businesses, 79% of professionals report they “always” use their iPad on the road. The use of mobile devices is at an inflection point and today’s new mobile offerings ensure that all users have the best, broadest and most secure access to content from any device. Box’s Chief Operating Officer, Dan Levin, will discuss how the rise of mobility and the spread of social capabilities across business applications is creating massive upheaval in IT. Attendees will learn how these short and long-term changes are transforming IT departments and revolutionizing today's workforce.

Cloud, virtualization and consumer IT are all going full-throttle, increasing data center complexity and throughput requirements in the process. For most enterprises, the data center remains at the epicenter of the ability to compete, to communicate, and to drive business forward.  The slightest interruption in information flow can mean the difference between profit and loss.
In this session, Data Center Systems CEO Kevin Ehringer will discuss how to protect your data center investment through implementing an appropriate connectivity management system.  Attendees will hear proven integration and risk management strategies for successfully executing mergers, acquisitions, equipment upgrades and addressing other critical, real-world business events that impact business progress.


 

As changing market conditions force the C-level technology leaders to innovate, rationalize, and often reinvent their company's  IT capability, knowing when to optimize and when to stay the course can be difficult.  Satisfying the CEO who may have just learned of new technologies, the Board who wants to be fiscally prudent, and customers who are used to immediate gratification, is challenging.  Our panel will explore the corporate and social responsibilities of today’s transformational IT leaders, discuss the ethical and social concerns as they relate to our roles, and compare notes on building strong, ethical foundations in highly productive teams.

Learn about State Street’s monumental transformation initiative based on standardization, reuse and automation. Hear how business and IT executives managed change and stayed focused on the business goal of speed to market and agile new product and service development while completely retooling and reframing the way that IT operates, develops and even innovates by deploying its state-of-the-art platform-as-as-service solution.

As an electronics manufacturing services provider, Celestica is privy to large amounts of cross-industry product lifecycle and supply chain data. Hear how Celestica translated this asset into a huge competitive advantage by creating and launching an enterprise-wide business analytics center of excellence to become one of the first electronics manufacturers to leverage business analytics to drive improvements and create competitive edge for its customers

The emergence of social media, consumer technology and cloud computing can feel like an assault on the business approach and decision-making practices of management. Conversations about topics of importance occur with incredible speed and information travels faster than ever before. Traditional organizational constructs are no longer authoritative sources of information. Instead, loose communities create knowledge. In the face of this issue, the IT leaders’ role of managing risk has become paramount. In some cases, the ability to assuage fear and help an organization be at ease with new and unfamiliar uses of technology has become more important than being an expert in the underlying technologies at play. Hear how this panel of transformational IT leaders are meeting these new challenges.

This session describes the specific issues that define the success and failure of business intelligence within an organization.  Through several case studies, attendees will gain insight into strategies and technologies they can employ in their own organization.  Among the examples will be the world’s largest BI deployments and those leveraging real-time and leading edge technologies to lower operational costs, discover lost revenues and drive new revenue opportunities. This session will be immediately followed by a live question and answer period.  

This lively, multi-topic workshop features a selection of Premier 100 Honorees holding small-group discussions on the practical details, business outcomes and lessons learned from their transformation projects. The workshop offers a more detailed look inside the workings of a wide range of innovative, high-value initiatives. Click here to view the list of transformational projects.

A transformational leader operates beyond the boundaries of titles and roles. His or her seat at the table is a given. The TL demonstrates a tacit knowledge of the business and all processes and expertly articulates a range of business approaches and solutions, either validating the C-suite’s vision, successfully redesigning and enabling it or a combination of both. In this presentation, Javier Polit illustrates the role of transformational leadership at one of the globe’s leading business and brand icons.

Join us as we celebrate the Class of 2012 Premier 100 IT Leaders at a black-tie dinner featuring a formal roll call of honorees and the presentation of Premier 100 awards.

As a courtesy reminder, please note that the Awards Dinner is black tie optional.