New at the IMF:

Website Redesign

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Web forums:

At 2PM today Patty Boyce, Director of Application Productivity at NASCO, will lead a discussion on how to make improvements on increasing application productivity based on trend observations from collected data.  Boyce has gained great insight through her current role at NASCO by working with a very large development partner.  NASCO is a large insurance claims processor based in Atlanta and owned by several Blue Cross Blue Shield Companies.

Next Thursday at 2PM will feature a discussion centered around “Retaining the IT Staff through Development and Training .” Workforce training and development is key in any successful company.  It promotes employee performance, satisfaction, and loyalty that inevitably leads to low employee turnover.  In this Web Forum, Verizon Wireless will discuss how they work through employee training and development programs to ensure their employees receive appropriate training and are given the development tools they need to grow and succeed while working at Verizon Wireless.

Click here to register for or view more web forums

Upcoming March Forum:

Details about the IMF’s upcoming March Forum “Designing & Running IT for the Future” are now available. The meeting will be held at the USAA facilities in San Antonio, Texas.

Click here to register for this forum  

Topics at this forum include:

Technologies and Trends Cisco is Using to Enable the Workforce of the Future
Dale Seavey, Director of Architecture/Design/Engineering at Cisco

The board consumerization of devices and the emergence of technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing is forcing IT departments to rethink how Client Services are provisioned, managed, supported, and charged for.  In addition, end users  are demanding great speed, simplicity, and mobility from the services that IT provides while also expecting “dial-tone-like” reliability and transparent security. To address these challenges and demands, Cisco IT has begun to redefine our architecture and strategy for Client Services. 

Allstate’s IT Service Management Journey
Mike Agar, Planning Consultant, Allstate Insurance

This presentation will cover the history of IT Service Management (ITIL) at Allstate focusing on governance, implementation, architecture and ITIL Process Roadmap, with an emphasis on the successes and challenges. It will delve into several of the challenges Allstate is faced with including: virtualization efforts, organizational changes, IT Services Provisioning and a continued need to justify IT Service Management.

High Performance Computing, Cheating the laws of physics?
Marty Smith, Chief Technology Officer, LexisNexis

This presentation will focus on the key considerations for successful use of a high-performance computing or supercomputing environment.  The specific discussion topics will focus on 1) What technologies are being deployed? E.g. Google’s file system, Extreme Data, Solid State Drive technology, etc… 2)  What strategies are employed to ensure the highest levels of redundancy? 3)  Are high-performance computing environments fully mirrored (from a hardware perspective), or do virtualization technologies play a role by providing load balancing and virtual redundancy capabilities without duplicate hardware?    
 

IT Operations at USAA
Rick Schlitt, Senior Vice President of IT Operations, USAA

Rick Schlitt will welcome the group to USAA’s world class facility and discuss the strategy that took them to very high quality, low cost IT operations. USAA has led a multiyear campaign to become a world class Financial services operation with best in class customer service and IT has been a critical enabler in this successful strategy. Rick will review the strategy and tactics employed to enable this goal.

Enterprise Architecture in a Complex Environment

Head of Enterprise Architecture for a Fortune 25 member of IMF will speak on their challenges in planning and designing across geographies incorporating the needs of the business, today’s complex security and virtualization requirements.  We will particularly examine  mission critical  E2E applications design.This will be an interactive discussion and all attendees are encouraged to discuss their environment.

Tour of USAA Headquarters
Attendees of this Forum will tour the USAA Headquarters, the largest commercial office building in the United States.  The art and historical memorabilia are in each of the connected 9 buildings is as interesting as this complex itself.