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Government Technology | Volume 9.2
DATA CENTRES
NEXT GENERATION DATA CENTRES Data centre professionals will be able to examine the issues surrounding the selection, outsourcing, building and running of a data centre at Data Centre World DATA CENTRE WORLD WAS LAUNCHED in February 2008 as the only free to attend event in the UK for data centre professionals. The number of events aimed at the industry has now grown but so too has the number of visitors to Data Centre World, making it the biggest gathering for the industry in the UK and it’s still the only free to attend event. The third Data Centre World Conference & Expo takes place at the Barbican, London on 23 and 24 February and attracts professionals responsible for the designing, commissioning and running of data centres or server rooms. It’s the only free-to-attend conference that guarantees top speakers discussing the very latest technologies and covers case studies, technical implementation papers, migration issues and scalability. THE CONFERENCE This year the conference will have over 32 sessions and the organisers have introduced different streams so that the programme now offers both technical and strategic sessions. The technical stream includes a session by Keith Clark, head of ICT at Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, who will talk about how virtualisation can save millions. The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead is home to 135,000 and a council workforce of 5,000. The council has slashed its energy bill by a staggering 44 per cent along with its environmental impact, and estimate total project savings in the region of £1.2 million. Intercept has been a tremendous help to have on board. The company’s expertise and experience was vital to the council’s success. Keith Clark is the head of ICT within the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, a Unitary Local Authority in Berkshire which is home to Windsor Castle, Eton College, Ascot Racecourse and Legoland. Keith’s role is to manage the delivery of key strategic initiatives aimed at providing value for money services to residents. Keith manages a team of 58 staff delivering ICT services to 5,000 staff including schools, who support 141,000 residents and 4,600 businesses. Keith has over 20 years experience with the Borough including nine years in his current role and has overseen the delivery of many significant projects within the council. CLOUD COMPUTING The strategic sessions include a talk by Trevor Dearing, head of enterprise marketing for Juniper Networks, who will look at whether datacentre security is obscured by the cloud. There are many unanswered questions
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THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE FOR GOVERNMENT TECHNOLOGY
relating to what the cloud is and what it is intended to do. This is a critical issue, particularly when readying data centres for the era of cloud computing. The common area where people often lose their focus when it comes to the cloud is how it is all managed from inside the business, such as who manages interactions with the cloud and who is responsible for the security of data shared on the cloud. Additionally, as more companies are moving towards cloud computing, service virtualisation is only going to get more complex as it introduces yet another layer of complexity to manage. Trevor Dearing has worked in the telecoms industry for 27 years in a variety of leading edge roles. He began in R&D developing networking solutions for digital CO voice switches. This included working with newly invented ethernet technology. His career then moved to a predominantly data networking role and involved implementing one of the first PC networks in EMEA. Trevor then spent time working in support,
sales and consultancy in the mainframe environment before moving to product marketing. He then changed to an EMEA role launching one of the first IPSec VPN products. He has been a prime mover in the integration of security within the network and works closely with many alliance partners. Recently he has guided Juniper’s entry into the Ethernet switch market. Other speakers include Lynn Collier, director of file and content solutions services for Hitachi Data Systems, and Roger Bearpark, head of ICT, London Borough Hillingdon. INNOVATIONS An innovation for this year is the introduction of interactive panels where the audience will be invited to pitch their questions to carefully selected experts from the industry which will see some lively debates on key issues affecting the data centre market. This will be an invaluable benefit to delegates and was introduced after the organisers carried out extensive research amongst previous visitors to find out exactly