In this Forum we will focus on the disciplines of Enterprise Architecture and IT Operations as we discuss designing and running your IT environment to accommodate current and future demands of efficiency, growth and excellence.

This meeting will be hosted by USAA in San Antonio, Texas.USAA is a diversified financial services group of companies, and is among the leading providers of financial planning, insurance, investments and banking products to members of the U.S. military and their families. The company's 7.2 million members rely on the convenience and accessibility of USAA financial products backed by award-winning service.
Since 1922, USAA has provided a full range of highly competitive financial products and services to the military and their families and today certain products are available to the public.

Unable to join us at the meeting? Follow live meeting updates via Twitter @ITInfoForum (#designandrunIT) and via the IMF Blog!

Topics that will be covered 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. Topics will include: virtualization efforts, organizational changes, IT Services Provisioning and a continued need to reinforce the importance of IT Service Management.

High Performance Computing

John Holt, Senior Architect, Risk Solutions, LexisNexis

The shared nothing computing cluster is inexpensive and highly scalable but, until now, difficult to use for running data intensive computing applications.  Efficient parallel algorithms for data intensive computing problems in a shared nothing cluster rely upon a divide and conquer paradigm which can be difficult to manually implement for many interesting problems.  The ECL language enables the programmer to specify the problem solution in an abstract manner that is functional and therefore independent of the parallel and distributed aspects of the platform allowing the divide and conquer to happen automatically.  The platform and language will be illustrated through several examples.

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.

TOGAF Value for Architects

Laura Tibodeau, Strategy & Planning Manager, Hewlett-Packard

An effective enterprise architecture is critical to business survival and success.  Tibodeau will speak about TOGAF and its importance as an industry standard architecture framework and its key importance in building and maintaining a successful Enterprise Architecture program.
 

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.