Tuesday 2nd November 2021
Managing data sprawl in a hybrid cloud environment
Adrian Cooper, Field CTO, NetApp
One of the inevitable consequences of living in a “data-driven” world is that we all need to store and manage increasing amounts of data. For universities, colleges and research driven organisations there can be significant cost associated with the storage and management of ever-growing quantities of data, especially if it resides in one or more of the public clouds.
This session will provide an insight into some of the technologies and solutions available to manage data growth and “cold” data in particular. This can lead to improved utilisation of deployed systems on premises, lower data storage costs, longer-term retention of valuable digital assets and easy consumption of public cloud resources.
Eat, Sleep, Remote, Repeat
Alex Goffe, ICT Services Manager; David Hughes, Information Security Analyst; and Gary Lloyd, Infrastructure Manager, Keele University
How Keele University is building resilient services for staff and students and overcoming its technical debt. The session will cover moving to O365, Cloud Services, Identity Management, and engagement with the wider University.
Why the most successful Enterprise Architecture is Collaborative - Leiden University, the Netherlands
Maarten van Schie, Leiden University; Daisy Schuchmann, and Henk van Wijnen, Value Blue
In this session, Leiden University will discuss the reinvention of collaboration within Enterprise Architecture, and how you can create value for your own organization — using one central and truly valuable collaboration platform that delivers insight into your business operations and how they are supported by your IT architecture.
Maarten van Schie will share Leiden University's approach to using Enterprise Architecture to gain control of change in this engaging presentation. Built on explicitly inviting stakeholders to collaborate in the architectural process, their approach has helped to solve some key and recognizable Enterprise Architecture challenges:<
- Dealing effectively with complexity without sacrificing speed
- Showing the benefits and value delivered by architecture, and
- Gathering the high-quality data required for effective architecture.
From Desktop to Data Centre: our journey over the last 18 months from bewilderment and chaos to different types of chaos but less bewilderment!
Christi Hopkinson and Liza McCarron, University of the West of England
How we navigated through the challenges of enabling our staff and students to become more digitally agile in a constantly shifting world. Looking at a variety of aspects from devices on their desks all the way through to how the infrastructure and our processes played a part in maintaining robust change and how we hope it will continue to do so.
Wednesday 3rd November 2021
Security Is Not Special: A Business Risk Like Any Other
Alex Lewis, Principal Security Consultant and Head of Cyber Assessment Services, Softcat
Alex will take you through the Softcat approach to developing a winning security strategy, drawing comparisons and benefits from existing risk management approaches. He will articulate how to develop a long-lasting internal culture inclusive of cyber risk, without succumbing to the fear, uncertainty and doubt the security world is infamous for.
The challenge of achieving true mobility for datacentre workloads
Gareth John, Q Associates
Lead Architect and Technologist, Gareth John, explores the reality of datacentre transformation, cloud adoption and workload migration from an independent perspective.
Gain insight into the key considerations, choices and pitfalls that face IT leaders as the modern data centre continues to evolve; embracing innovation by utilising appropriate cloud resources whilst also ensuring IT service levels are capable of meeting the increasing and rapidly changing demands of the modern university.
Beyond IaaS; Robust architectures and security models for cloud native technologies
Josh Fry, Director of Cloud, Jisc
Cloud technology providers are keen to describe a shared security model, with the emphasis on responsibility divided between supplier and consumer. But as with any other security model, accountability for security remains with the institution. Applying traditional security methodologies and architectural models to Cloud native technologies – such as function / event-driven serverless computing, micro service architectures, containerisation, CI/CD etc. plus migrating and integrating with SaaS environments, could leave institutions open to potential weaknesses and / or not exploiting Cloud native technologies to their full advantage. This talk will examine the topic of beyond IaaS: What institutions need to be putting in place to ensure they have the best architectures and security models for the next phase of their cloud adoption, and have confidence in being able to take advantage of future cloud technologies.
Thursday
Smarter Distributed Working with Office 365
Nick Skelton, Independent IT Consultant
Since the pandemic universities have realised the importance of IT communication platforms and the infrastructure staff who run them. But without help organisations simply mirror their old practices into new tools, replacing face to face meetings with back-to-back Zoom fatigue. IT professionals understand the potential of tools like Office 365, and can light the spark of revolution. But only through working across the university can we achieve it. With Estates and Digital Education we will embed AV tech across the campus. With HR we can create new digital etiquettes and practices. Together we will change our universities for the better.
Zero Trust Data Management - How to protect & recover from a ransomware attack
Grant Dinning, Rubrik
Join Rubrik to hear how they have helped HE organisations meet and exceed the NSCS backup audit requirements with immutable copies of data, ransomware detection and remediation, automated policy-based protection for all workloads – VMware, Windows, Linux, SQL, NAS and Microsoft 365.
HE are being targeted with ransomware attacks designed to gain access to backup solutions and to encrypt backup data as a precursor to a wider-scale, crippling ransomware attack. This current threat places utmost importance on implementing a robust backup solution that can resist targeted cyber-attacks and allow organisations to recover from an attack when needed.
Leadership Vision for 2022: Infrastructure and Operations
Tim Zimmerman, VP Analyst, Gartner
Each year Gartner presents its annual Leadership Vision for Infrastructure and Operations which is a culmination of multiple surveys of over 12,000 I&O leaders. This presentation will reveal some of the challenges, goals and trends faced by I&O leaders as well as the recommended actions to be successful through this challenging and volatile period.
The Internet of Unusual Things
Bruce Rodger, Head of Infrastructure, University of Strathclyde
Once upon a time, campus networks hosted desktop computers, servers, printers and very little else. Today, these devices are becoming a minority, and IoT devices place very different demands on our campus infrastructure.
Bruce will be looking at how our networks – and the devices on them, and the services we offer over them – have evolved, focussing on three very different new buildings at the University of Strathclyde – a Learning & Teaching Building, a Sports Centre, and a Student Union.
Expect photos, and war stories. Just how many network lines could a sports centre possibly need?
