London Programme

Day One
Thursday 25 September 2008

8:30 Registration and coffee

9:00 BEST PRACTICE TO MANAGING THE GRID

  • Implementing acceleration technology – merging high performance computing into grids
  • What tools are available for development
  • Which types of applications are being developed, and what challenges are there to managing the grid?
  • Is outsourcing a cost effective option?
Rupert Brown, Principal Architect, MERRILL LYNCH

10:30 Morning break

11:00 GROWING THE GRID - EFFECTIVE CAPACITY PLANNING

    • Aligning it with business demands
    • Monitoring IT activity and allocation
    • Looking at hybrid models that utilize cloud computing
    • How to align architecture to the next cost model
    • Deliver next generation application services, e.g., SOA, Web 2.0, etc..
    Mathieu Gauthron, Senior Consulting Engineer, DATASYNAPSE

    12:30 Lunch

    13:30 DATA CACHE – DEALING WITH THE COMPROMISES
      • Be aware of the variety of approaches to moving data around a large distributed system
      • Understand limitations and benefits of these approaches
      • Understand the different data cache topologies
      • Understand the different data cache replication strategies
      • Know the compromises that must be made in combining scalability, low latency and data movement on a grid
      • Understand, at a high level, which architectures and topologies are appropriate for each problem
      Dr Adam Vile, Head of Grid & HPC and Technical Computing, EXCELIAN
      James Liddle, CEO, Jana Technology Services

      15.00 Afternoon break

      15.30 INFRASTRUCTURAL CHALLENGES TO BUILDING A DATA GRID

      • How do you utilize resources in a more effective way?
      • Implementation challenges of event processing
      • Creating real-time infrastructure
      • Data centre requirements to meet growth in grids
      • Utility computing – performance and efficiency
      Vivake Gupta, Managing Director, LAB49

      17.00 END OF DAY ONE

      Day Two
      Friday 30 September 2008

      08:30 REGISTRATION AND COFFEE

      09:00 INTEGRATION WITH GRIDS COMPUTING

      • Addressing the problem of new apps and business services take too long in the “queue”
      • Data center evolution
      • Today’s challenges include little or no prioritization – cannot dynamically align resources based on business policies or demand
      • Grid Computing Delivers High Performance and Enables Extreme SOA
      • Virtualization Creates Additional Resource Supply
      • Must meet more applications, more users, and more demand
      Nathan Matthews, DATASYNAPSE

      10:30 MORNING BREAK

      11:00 ADDRESSING SECURITY ISSUES ON THE GLOBAL GRID

      • Achieving data confidentiality and provisioning
      • What security technologies are available
      • Authentication methods
      • Management
      • In-house or in the cloud
      James Burns, CTO Financial Services, MICROSOFT

      12:30 LUNCH

      13:30 EXECUTING SCAVENGING GRIDS

      • Assessing platform dependence for certain applications
      • Application adoption
      • Appropriate resource pools for scavenging
      • Ensuring quality of service
      Vidyut Shetty, Team Leader: HPC Engineering, BARCLAYS CAPITAL INVESTMENT BANK

      15:00 AFTERNOON BREAK

      15:30 HARNESSING IDLE COMPUTE CAPACITY

      • Workstation idle capacity
      • Server idle capacity - an alternative to consolidation
      • Platform dependency issues
      • Performance statistics and tuning reccomendations
      • The credit suisse implementation
      Philipp Molzer, Assistant VP, Derivatives IT, CREDIT SUISSE

      17:00 END OF DAY TWO