Data centre experts to converge on Sydney

The DCD Converged Australia conference is returning for its 6th year at the Australian Tech Park on 3-4 August 2015, featuring five industry-focused tracks of cutting-edge content from renowned speakers.

Those thought leaders will share key insights into the dynamic growth of data centres as business drivers, and the convergence of technologies that makes this possible.

Spurred by strong market demands for co-location, cloud computing and storage needs, Australia is witnessing a fast pace of growth and transformation of data centres. Investment continues to pour in from both the government and private sector, with new announcements, consolidations and launches anticipated in the next few years.

Since October 2014, the Australian Government has also pushed for a cloud-first mandate, with potential savings of up to 30% for taxpayers. While enterprises have started migrating software and applications to the cloud, many of the critical ones still sit physically in-house within the enterprise and data centre, citing security and privacy as their top concerns.

Among the experts lined up to speak are:

• Este Darin-Cooper, Director, Regulation & Strategy, Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
• Tim Palmer, Head of Managed Cloud Services, National Australia Bank
• Steve Helvie, VP of Channel - International, Open Compute Project Foundation
• Kamal Nankani, Global Chief Enterprise Architect, GE Capital
• Ramesh Narayanaswamy, CIO, Singapore Post
• Dr Philip Nesci, CIO, Monash Health
• Alan Perkins, IT Director, Inchcape Australia
• Dr Andrew Dicks, Industry Advisor, LC Energy
• Kai Koberstein, GM, IT Capabilities & Transformation, Vodafone Hutchison Australia

The conference will have five tracks across two days, being:

• IT & Networks - focused on helping senior strategists understand the implications of IT and network transformation on data centre design and architecture.
• Environment - covering the issues faced by professionals who manage the performance, efficiency and resilience of the critical environment.
• Design & Strategy - the issues facing those responsible for the organisational strategy and design of on-premise data centres.
• App > Cloud - focused on matters of concern to professionals who manage blended/hybrid infrastructures and the technical/regulatory challenges of delivering critical ICT through the cloud.
• Security & Risk - helping professionals tasked with assessing the risk and managing the security of evermore-distributed mission-critical infrastructure and ICT systems.

Key session highlights will include:

• Are current networks up to speed with growing demands from cloud and mobile internet data?
• How can you exploit the best out of your IT providers?
• CAPEX or OPEX: make the right assessment to buy, build or lease DC real estate
• Extending the lifecycle of aging data centres
• Renewable energy as an alternative power resource
• DevOps and IT workflows: how are they transforming the way enterprises work today?
• Cloud service brokers: how can they add value?
• OpenStack - can it change the game for cloud computing?
• BYOD and its security implications

The early-bird registration rate is current until 15 June 2015.

Image courtesy Dennis van Zuijlekom under CC