Interop ITX Spotlights IT Infrastructure Evolution

As enterprises look to leverage technology for new products and services that give them an edge over the competition, IT infrastructure is changing faster than ever. Legacy architectures are giving way to software-defined technologies, cloud, open source and automation as IT organizations adapt to support these enterprise digital transformation initiatives and focus on speed and new capabilities.

With all these changes, infrastructure pros are under intense pressure. How do you keep up with all the emerging trends? How do you evaluate new technologies and figure out which ones might be right for your business? At the same time, you still need to maintain existing infrastructure, so efficiency is critical.

At Interop ITX, infrastructure pros can get a wealth of education on all the hot technologies and emerging IT trends in just five days. The conference features more than two dozen full- and half-day workshops, summits, and hour-long sessions focused on infrastructure, including networking, containers, automation, and hyperconvergence.

Attendees can get up to speed on software-defined networking, software-defined storage, next-generation WANs, and wireless networking design. For those who want some direct experience with new technologies, workshops on network automation and open source are some of the sessions that include hands-on instruction.

At the same time, attendees can also get practical tips for managing existing infrastructure with sessions on network troubleshooting, wireless security, and disaster recovery.

Leading these workshops and sessions are some of the brightest minds in the IT community. These infrastructure experts, such as Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks, are among the most respected in the industry for their deep knowledge in their respective domains. The speaker roster at Interop ITX includes analysts and consultants as well as practitioners from Mastercard and Shutterstock, who will provide first-hand accounts of how they're transforming their infrastructure.

Here's a sample of what you can look forward to in the Interop ITX infrastructure track:

Packet Pushers Future of Networking Summit – Greg Ferro and Ethan Banks of Packet Pushers will reprise their popular two-day summit, which will look at the technologies and trends impacting networking in the next five to ten years. This year's summit will cover automation and orchestration, visibility and analytics, cloud networking, and next-gen WAN.

Container Crash Course – Containers are one of the hottest technologies in IT today and a hot topic at this year's Interop. This all-day event is designed to equip attendees with core knowledge of containers and understanding of how the technology can apply to their business. The summit features a panel of experts in container technologies, microservices, and DevOps from companies such as Docker, Red Hat, Amazon Web Services.

Later in the week, Stephen Foskett, organizer of the popular Tech Field Days, will present "The Case for Containers: What, When and Why?" and Brian Gracely, director of product strategy at Red Hat and well-known cloud expert, will present "Managing Containers in Production: What You Need to Think About."

"Hands-on Practical Network Automation" – Interop ITX attendees have a couple opportunities to learn about network automation. This half-day workshop will cover how to get started with network automation and includes an introduction to Python. Two of the workshop's speakers -- Jere Julian, extensibility engineer at Arista Networks and Scott Lowe, engineering architect at VMware -- recently wrote a Network Computing blog outlining the benefits of automation. Twin Bridges Founder Kirk Byers, who teaches Python to network pros, and Matt Oswalt, software engineer at Stackstorm, are co-presenters.

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Oswalt also is scheduled to present "Fundamental Principles of Automation," which is designed to help IT pros understand automation basics.

Cloud expert Lori MacVittie, principal technical evangelist at F5 Networks, will discuss IT automation more broadly in her session, "Operationalizing IT with Automation and APIs."

"SDN: What Is It Good For?" -- This session will feature a panel of infrastructure experts including Robin Perez, deputy director of infrastructure for the City of New York and Thomas Edwards, VP of engineering and development at FOX, who will provide first-hand accounts of how their organizations have implemented SDN. The panel is designed to provide practical guidance for defining and scoping an SDN project. Lisa Caywood, director of ecosystem development at the Linux Foundation's OpenDaylight Project, is the panel moderator.

"Wireless Network Design That Scales to Business Demands" -- This session is a recent addition to the Interop ITX schedule featuring top-rated Interop speaker George Stefanick, wireless network architect at Houston Methodist Hospital. His session at last year's Interop on wireless network design, which covered site surveys and issues like co-channel interference, received high marks from attendees.

"The Killer Troubleshooting Toolset Revisited" – Networking pros can spend a lot of time trying to track down the root cause of network and application performance issues. In this half-day workshop, Mike Pennacchi, owner and lead network analyst for Network Protocol Specialists, will cover a number of powerful network troubleshooting tools that help streamline the process. Pennacchi is a longtime Interop instructor whose sessions consistently receive high marks.

"Converged and Hyperconverged Infrastructure: Myths and Truths" -- The buzz around converged/hyperconverged infrastructure is inescapable. Interop ITX features a couple sessions to help cut through the hype. This session, presented by Krista Macomber, TBR senior analyst, will cover the pros and cons, adoption trends, and provide recommendations for enterprises considering the technology. Another session, "Things To Know Before You (Hyper) Converge Your Infrastructure," will cover key considerations and evaluation criteria. Enterprise Strategy Group analysts Dan Conde and Jack Poller are the presenters.

"Building the Infrastructure Future at Mastercard" – Len Sanker, senior VP of enterprise architecture and data engineering at Mastercard will discuss challenges in aligning technology capabilities with business goals. Another practitioner, Shutterstock CIO David Giambruno, will share best practices and lessons learned while leading a major data center transformation in "Building a Next-Generation API-Driven Infrastructure for Scaling Growth."