Cloud Computing continues to evolve at a phenomenal pace. In attempt to reduce costs and make IT more efficient, many organisations have adopted cloud computing in an ad-hoc manner. But to harness the power of cloud computing, organisations need a pragmatic—and realistic–strategy. That requires evaluating the business value of cloud services, planning an adoption cycle and avoiding pitfalls.

Catalyst 2010 will help you create a realistic cloud strategy based on today’s capabilities, not the hype of a distant future. We’ll focus on how you can determine which applications fit in the cloud and why, how you evaluate service providers and determine if they’re “enterprise grade,” how to manage service provider relationships, and what it takes to integrate internal and external clouds. We’ll also take a close look at the risk and liability issues inherent in cloud computing, giving you a clear grasp of what’s realistic today and what’s not.

Enterprises are aggressively investing in collaboration tools—blogs, wikis, SharePoint, social networking—as a way to recognise experts, increase worker creativity, and speed decision-making. But it’s not always easy to choose the best tools for the job, or to use them effectively. It’s difficult to develop a defensible ROI case, for example. And while collaboration tools continually evolve, corporate culture problems can render them ineffective and the identity and security issues associated with using them are increasing.

Catalyst 2010 will help you understand the business value of collaboration. We’ll define how the complex interactions between culture, process and tools impact collaboration and what you can do about it. We’ll also supply frameworks that you can use to define and execute an appropriate collaboration strategy.

Identity management is moving from a centralised activity to a more decentralised, multi-party model. Identity managers are facing a proliferation of new authoritative sources for identity information, and requirements to use that information in an increasing variety of applications and business processes. There are also new protocols and systems for collecting, distributing, using, and monitoring identity information. The pressure on IT organisations to reduce costs is increasing, while regulatory pressure and business requirements escalate the demand for fast, accurate, and compliant management of identity. At Catalyst 2010, we will describe new business processes that are emerging to satisfy today’s more complex identity requirements, and significant updates to our technical architectures that support those processes. We’ll also define the first milestones on the roadmap from centralised enterprise identity management to multi-party identity management.

Many organisations are preparing for economic recovery by rethinking assumptions, striving for regulatory compliance, charting alternative courses, and monitoring which business scenario might unfold. One thing is clear; navigating the new normal requires more than automation. It requires the ability to leverage data to develop insight that can inform and drive business decisions.

But knowing the path isn’t the same as walking the path. Business professionals are inundated with information, and it’s getting harder to know what is “true.” Business people struggle to share their knowledge and most organisations are mired in unreliable data. Business cannot thrive under these conditions. Simply put, IT must help the business determine how to make sense out of petabytes of information, and use it to make better decisions.

• Navigating the “New Normal”: why what “worked” in the past is no longer sufficient
• How the economic crisis has been a positive thing for business strategy
• Why it’s OK to let go of commodity IT
• Reframing the IT/Business relationship
• Lessons of transformation from the real world
• How to position IT as a strategic partner

Networking and telecommunications is in the midst of a major transformation – one at least as significant as migration to the Internet Protocol in the 1990s. With more than 3 billion mobile phones extant, at least 1 of every 2 people on earth now has a wireless communications device. Most new PCs are now laptops with built-in Wi-Fi and most enterprise voice calls are made from mobile phones. In response, mobile operators have proliferated their service offerings and geographic coverage to address customer demand for ubiquitous, always-on wireless connectivity.

Many enterprises have been slow to embrace or recognise this major trend towards mobility. While wired network infrastructures are hardly disappearing, users have shown a clear preference for mobility and wireless communications. Consequently, organisations must increasingly address issues such as mobile devices management, security, applications development, fixed mobile convergence and mobile operator service selection. Catalyst 2010 will examine the ongoing trend towards mobility, helping you understand how to prepare.

To be effective, security systems must be defined, implemented, and operated in a clear business context. That means knowing what we need to secure and why, the threats we need to counter and the negative consequences we are trying to limit. In other words, we must know how security supports business objectives. Given the rapid change occurring in today’s business, it’s clear that we need new security models. Simply securing data at rest is no longer sufficient, given how mobile people, devices, and information are. The notion of risk itself and how we measure it must change in the face of rapidly evolving threats. Simply put, deciding what to secure and how to secure it requires high degrees of alignment with the business. Catalyst 2010 will address this dynamic, helping you understand the new security models that today’s business models demand.

The death of SOA at the beginning of 2009 stunned many. SOA was supposed to be the saviour of IT. Unfortunately, most SOA initiatives failed to deliver their promised business benefits. Business people now view SOA as expensive and ineffectual, and they aren’t interested in paying for it anymore. So what comes next? Cloud computing, BPM, mashups, mobile computing, and other modern systems require a flexible application architecture that enables seamless interoperability. Organisations can no longer presume a homogeneous environment. And services are still important part of any architecture. Catalyst 2010 will examine the latest trends in application development and define the next generation application architecture, helping you chart the proper course for your business.

Virtualisation technology has found a home in every aspect of the enterprise, including servers, storage, networking, security, client endpoints, and applications. Today, it’s more a question of when, not if, when it comes to virtualising production applications. Simply put, virtualisation is required to reap the rewards of cloud-based IT.

While external cloud computing continues to evolve, work on building and optimising internal/hybrid cloud infrastructures using virtualisation is a priority for many enterprises. In 2010, then, the focus for virtualisation is shifting from consolidation to building and optimising cloud infrastructures.