For Security & Risk Management Leaders, Symposium/ITxpo 2009 will answer:

• How do I create clear links between risk management initiatives and business performance?
• How much security is enough security, particularly with ever-tightening budgets?
• What are the elements of an effective proactive program to address reasonably anticipated threats?
• In the absence of a breach or disaster, how do I drive executive support and funding for a proactive approach to security, risk management and business continuity?

How much security is enough, particularly with ever-tightening budgets? The irony of great security, risk management, and business continuity programs is that they’re only appreciated when something goes wrong or, ideally, a great wrong is averted. Part of this is the immature treatment of these disciplines, but part of it lies in security leaders’ failure to clearly define and articulate the business value of what they do. This track will help you create a program that addresses risk, meets compliance requirements, and is directly linked to business performance.

For Program & Portfolio Management Leaders, Symposium/ITxpo 2009 will answer:

• How can I create an optimal portfolio of programs and projects that deliver the most value at the least cost?
• What new approaches to valuing and prioritizing projects do I need to use to ensure I am delivering the right mix for the business?
• How can I build flexibility and agility into my programs, so that my enterprise can capitalize on, or mitigate the risk of, today’s volatile and fast-changing business environment?

Program and portfolio management leaders have extraordinary influence over what actually gets done in business technology – or at least you should. After all, it’s your job to value, prioritize, and then see through your enterprise’s key initiatives. In today’s tough economy, it can be more challenging than ever, and requires new approaches. This track focuses on how to create an optimal portfolio, new approaches to valuing and prioritizing projects, and building flexibility and agility into programs to mitigate risk and increase opportunity.

For I&O Leaders focused on Data Centers, IT Operations and Client Computing, Symposium/ITxpo 2009 will answer:

• Where and how can I wring yet more costs out of my data center and client computing environment, without sacrificing performance and reliability?
• How can I best utilize virtualization, consolidation, cloud computing, ITIL and other key I&O trends to lower costs, improve service and increase agility? I can’t afford to move forward on all fronts – so which ones do I do now and which ones to do I defer?
• How do I demonstrate and articulate the value of servers, storage, PCs – all things infrastructure– to my business leaders?
• How do I drive efficiencies and cost savings in my help desk, support and configuration management systems – all things IT operations? And how do I also create a support environment that can easily scale up and down as my business does the same?

Combine virtualization, consolidation, automation, and cloud computing – and throw in a recession – and you’ve got the makings for huge I&O cost-savings expectations. Meanwhile, don’t forget to improve service quality and increase agility. And what about upgrading those aging PCs? Such is the plight of today’s data center, IT operations, and client computing leaders. We’ll tackle it all, including ways to wring yet more costs out of the data center and client computing environment and how to utilize the best of the big trends to lower costs, improve service, and increase agility.

For Enterprise Architecture Leaders, Symposium/ITxpo 2009 will answer:

• What immediate steps can I take to manage IT costs in a thoughtful and business-sensitive fashion?
• How can we resize, re-engineer and reality-check the IT project and IT asset portfolios to deliver more business value while reducing complexity and enabling change?
• How can we use pragmatic, “lightweight” planning approaches to enhance innovation and incorporate new technology without sacrificing the benefits of reduced complexity and economies of scale?

Enterprise architects are responding to today’s challenging environment by using the tools of strategy to manage IT costs while providing a platform for innovation. By moving beyond the obsession with granular standard setting and instead focusing on information exchange and business process management, enterprise architects are learning to embrace social computing and user-centric technology. We’ll cover immediate steps to take to manage IT costs in a business-sensitive fashion, plus strategies to resize, re-engineer, and reality-check your IT project and IT asset portfolios.

For Business Process Improvement Leaders, Symposium/ITxpo 2009 will answer:

• Done well, how will cost savings, time-to-market improvement, customer retention, and/or revenue growth flow from my process initiatives? Which kinds of business processes are the low-hanging fruit, the improvement of which will drive the highest yield in the shortest time?
• What steps should I take to improve disparate processes and manage them through a “business process competency center”?
• To judge the effectiveness and value of BPI initiatives, what should I measure and how should I measure it?
• What best practices can I use to model, analyze, execute and optimize business processes that span business units, organizational silos and geographies?

Improving business processes, among the most important priorities for CIOs, can contribute to a number of other business priorities, including customer acquisition and retention, risk management, worker productivity and the critical task of cost optimization. For some enterprises, regaining control of critical processes will be a matter of survival. In this track we’ll look at how cost savings, time-to-market improvement, customer retention, and revenue growth can flow from process initiatives, as well as how to measure the effectiveness and value of BPI initiatives and more.

For Business Intelligence & Information Management Leaders, Symposium/ITxpo 2009 will answer:

• How do organizations get the most business value out of their business intelligence and information management initiatives? What’s the opportunity cost of failing to do so?
• What are the right set of skills, organizational models and governance required to make BI & IM leaders and initiatives successful?
• How do you fuse information inside the firewall (i.e., corporate data) with information and applications outside the firewall (e.g., consumer Web applications, social networking applications) to create a manageable and scalable set of innovative tools for my business leaders?
• How will the consolidation of major vendors with offerings for BI & IM initiatives affect my sourcing of solutions? How viable are the emerging vendors with offerings for these initiatives?

Today’s leadership teams need to adapt to new business models, manage changes in business processes, make knowledge workers more productive, and exploit information as a strategic asset. They will provide the leadership and investment for the content, data, and information management initiatives needed to transform their businesses, or their businesses will be operating in the dark using outdated information, tools, skills, processes, and business models. We’ll identify what needs to be done and how, plus examine the changing vendor landscape.

For Application Leaders, Symposium/ITxpo 2009 will answer:

• Which approaches to application acquisition or development, integration and delivery, and ongoing support and maintenance will allow me to create the best, fastest and cheapest software solutions that deliver sustainable business value?
• What are the economics behind new architectures like SOA, WOA and EDA, and alternative delivery models for software, like SaaS and cloud? Are the cost savings, efficiencies and flexibility real and quantifiable? What are the tradeoffs?
• How do I justify my legacy modernization projects in the face of budget tightening? What metrics can I produce that will convince business leaders we’ll be better off in the long run for the investments made today?
• What investments should I be making today — in E-business, Web self-service, marketing & loyalty, price optimization and the like — to hasten my business’s return to growth post-recession?

From SOA to mashups to SaaS to cloud computing, the road to truly valuable software — solutions with worth you can prove — is difficult but navigable. Symposium/ITxpo will give you the tools to create the best, fastest, and cheapest software solutions that deliver sustainable business value. Among other topics, we’ll look at the economics and tradeoffs behind new architectures like SOA, WOA, and EDA, and which investments now will hasten your business’s return to growth post-recession.

• What must I do to increase performance and reduce IT costs?
• How will IT create business value and contribute to renewed business activity?
• What needs to be in my IT strategic plan, and what expectations should I be setting for the business and my organization in 2010?
• How do I get the people, resources and capabilities necessary to deliver on my plan? How do I motivate, measure and guide performance?
• What are the skills, abilities and relationships required of me and my team to lead today and into the future?
• What are the sources of IT-driven innovation and competitive advantage?

CIOs face unprecedented challenges leading IT, needing to reduce costs while simultaneously delivering innovation to drive effectiveness. The CIO program at Symposium concentrates on the issues, decisions, needs and actions required for IT success. To succeed, CIOs must enhance IT performance through new tools and practices. Using these tools, CIOs will position IT and business expectations for IT now and in the future. The future requires defining new sources of IT-led innovation and competitive advantage.

The complimentary nature of our events portfolio enables a sponsor to experience interacting with unique highly-qualified prospects (there is only a 3% overlap of our Summit and Symposium attendees on a yearly basis) at each event.

SYMPOSIUM/ITXPO: OUR FLAGSHIP EVENT

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is held six times a year in locations from the United States to Europe, Japan, and Australia. Its pre-eminence as a technology conference is renowned; it attracts more of the world’s technology savvy executives than virtually any other. Expect to meet the highest concentration of C-level executives and IT buying teams from the Global 500 in a range of industries. Sponsorship yields exposure to a core audience of empowered business technology buyers, making it an indispensable means of building brand equity, growing sales, and expanding presence in the Marketplace.

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SUMMIT EVENTS: TECHNOLOGY FOCUSED

Gartner Summit Events delve into the heart of today’s most pressing IT-related challenges and topics, bringing together a highly targeted group of executives, analysts, and sponsors for several intensive days of presentations and discussions with a sole technology focus. Attended largely by key influencers and decision-makers in the IT buying process, Summit Events offer sponsors a intimate opportunity to communicate directly with the individuals who help shape their organizations’ technology strategies.

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