Further. Forward. Faster. A story of BI, BIG Data and Application Infrastructure

Learn about IT architectural best practices and business value of Microsoft-related products and technologies.
 
This complimentary forum will fuel your thinking as an IT Leader and IT architect, support networking with peers and industry leaders, and help you learn and share best practices and experiences in an informal environment.
 
We will have two separate tracks which will cover Big Data and BI and Application Platform and the Cloud. We ask you to have at least one IT architect from your team at each track.
 
The sessions will be presented by Microsoft experts in each respective area. We know you will get great value from the discussions!

Register Now!

 

Mississauga - May 30th

Montreal - June 4th
  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8:30 – 9:00 am

Breakfast  

 

 

9:00 – 10:00 am

Evolving the Data Center: Transforming Data into Insight Join us for highlights of Microsoft’s next wave of technologies for delivering comprehensive solutions that help meet the needs of your most mission critical systems‚ and enable innovative solutions across on-premises and cloud environments. This session will address some of the tough issues facing organizations today such as managing the explosion of unstructured data‚ and empowering end-users to gain meaningful insights from the abundance of externally and internally available data.  

 

 

10:00 – 10:15 am

Break  

 

 

 

Track 1 BI and Big Data  

 

Track 2 Application Platform and the Cloud  

 

 

10:15 – 11:15 am  

Microsoft Business Intelligence. What’s new? Business Analytics represents an entire ecosystem for organisational decision making. From enabling the use of any data, of any size, virtually anywhere, and connecting to the world's data, through to generating valuable insights, wherever you are.   In this presentation we will demonstrate how you can easily build a cube and accelerate the development process with the new tabular models in SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT, Formerly BIDS). We will also provide an overview of the newest features in SSRS (Data Alerts and PowerView for ad-hoc reporting) and Excel 2013 (Data Explorer, PowerPivot Enhancements and PowerView)  

 

Building SQL Server Private Cloud: Value of Server Consolidation Most organisations are looking to reduce their IT costs while getting more flexibility and better availability.   Join us to learn how you can take advantage of your current solutions to help reduce long term licensing costs, simplify patch and upgrades, and help reduce your environmental footprint  

 

 

11:15 – 12:15 pm  

Fast Forward with BIG Data and SQL Server 2012 Parallel Data Warehouse. Big Data is a concept discussed in many organisations and all over the web. Join us to understand how Microsoft can simplify your Big Data approach and see the benefits of a Big Data strategy for your company.   We also introduce new Microsoft BIG Data solution: SQL Server 2012 Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW)—the next generation of the scalable, massively parallel processing (MPP) data warehouse appliance.    

 

Extending Your Apps and Infrastructure Into the Cloud You’re in charge of reconciling the on-premise datacenter with the cloud and you have to execute flawlessly. What should go in the cloud? What should stay on premise? How do you decide? Once you’ve made your decision, how do you actually make it happen? After all, enterprise apps are complex and often depend on services, directories, and databases which are located on premise. Mission critical hardware and services in your datacenter already have sophisticated tools and processes in place. Downtime is not an option. Come learn how to turn this seemingly daunting task into a solid step towards moving applications, services, and infrastructure to the cloud. In this seminar, gain the knowledge, experience, and confidence you need to extend your apps and infrastructure into Windows Azure while minimizing risk and complexity.  

 

 

12:15 – 1:00 pm  

Lunch  

 

 

1:00 – 2:00 pm

Modern UI Apps on devices (phone, tablet, desktop) Learn how the development runtime model has changed in Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 from previous versions of the Microsoft client platforms. This session will describe the options for building Apps that can be published in the Windows and Windows Phone Stores using Visual Studio 2012 and developed in C# or in HTML5 and Javascript. In the session we will investigate how to maximize code re-use between an App designed for a small mobile form factor, medium-size tablet form factor geared towards touch, and a large desktop form factor with mouse and keyboard. We will investigate how changes in the security, identity and storage models effects how we build, maintain and deploy these Modern UI applications and we will run through a complete demonstration of building and submitting Apps to the Microsoft App certification processes.  

 

Upgrading to SQL Server 2012 “Done Right” Learn how to successfully implement different upgrade scenarios, including advanced such as rolling updates. By the end of the session you will have a clear understanding of which tools to use, which upgrade strategies to implement, and how to successfully upgrade to SQL Server 2012.  

 

 

2:00 – 2:30 pm

Summary and Wrap Up  

 

 

 

 

 

Please RSVP now, number of seats is limited!