2019-innov-ex_logo

Welcome
8:00-8:30am
Christian Primeau, Global CEO, SYNTAX
Ryan Etinson, CEO, America, SYNTAX

 


How Syntax is Improving the Customer Experience
8:30-9:00am
Marcelo Tamassia, Global CTO, SYNTAX

Marcelo Tamassia will speak to how Syntax is improving the customer experience. 


Opening keynote
9:00-9:40am
Greg Verdino, Business Futurist

Greg Verdino, business futurist and a leading authority on digital transformation, discusses "Digital Revolutionaries: How the World’s Boldest Businesses Tap into Exponential Change to Transform Themselves, their Industries and the World." 

Driven by wave after wave of exponential advances in technology, humans are racing toward a “hypernetworked now” that reimagines every aspect of how we live and work. Businesses that can’t transform at the same speed of change will face an uncertain future at best and certain failure at worst. Those that can will see exciting opportunities for exponential growth.

Welcome to the world of digital revolutionaries – the companies (and the leaders inside those companies) that are transforming themselves and entire industries. Over the course of more than two decades, digital futurist and business strategist Greg Verdino has not only studied change; he has helped some of the world’s most highly regarded organizations navigate it successfully. In this thought-provoking exploration of the technologies and trends that are rebooting business right now, you will see how the world’s boldest businesses – both digital disruptors and innovative incumbents – are already putting tomorrow’s biggest business ideas to work today. Plus you’ll learn how you can do the same in order to beat your competition to the future and meet the consumer of the future.

In this opening keynote, you'll:

  • Understand the top trends shaping the future of business, society and the world
  • See powerful examples of the ways in which exponential changes in technology are changing what it means to be human, and consider why #humantransformation sits at the heart of customer and employee experience
  • Learn how and why digital has become a board-level business imperative
  • See how companies in a wide range of industries are turning to digital to transform the way they work, how they create and capture new value, and the relationships they have with their customers
  • Gain insight into how you can apply these lessons to transform your own business to thrive for the future


Syntax Customer Panel
9:40-10:20am
Dole Foods, Cintas & Ascend Performance Materials

Syntax customers (Dole Foods, Cintas, & Ascend Performance Materials) discuss how to "Turn Buzzword Technologies into an Enterprise IT Roadmap."

Digital transformation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain are some of today’s hottest buzzwords. How do some of today’s leading companies put these concepts into action?


BREAK
10:20-10:30am


Breakout Session #1
10:30-11:10am
AWS & SPLUNK

After more than a decade of SAP and AWS collaborating on behalf of SAP customers, two common themes have emerged as the key benefits of moving SAP workloads to AWS: retiring technical debt and accelerating innovation.  Retiring technical debt enables customers to move away from their old, inflexible, on-premises infrastructure and take advantage of modern DevOps, automation.  And, customers can now move to S/4HANA without long-term commitments and with the ability to explore with low risk and to deliver value to the business. Join us to find out more about SAP on AWS and get your questions answered.

Keeping up with the speed of business while avoiding costly cybersecurity incidents is critical to an organization’s success. But managing security operations can all too often feel like a never-ending battle. From defending the enterprise before the enemy strikes to staying up to date with the tactics and techniques of your most formidable adversaries — all this and more can make managing security operations an increasingly difficult task. That’s where Splunk comes in. Our aim is to help you streamline your security practice so you can respond to incidents at machine speed, minimize risk and improve incident response.


Breakout Session #2
11:15-11:55am
Microsoft & HPE

As a strategic partner of SAP, Microsoft recently launched a number of innovations for SAP on Azure.  With virtual machines now certified to run SAP HANA up to 12TB memory capacity, and HANA Large Instances (HLI) up to 24TB for S/4 HANA and 120TB for BW on HANA, Azure is positioned more than ever to take on customers largest SAP workloads in public cloud.  Also, with addition of Azure NetApp Files (ANF), proximity placement groups (PPG), high availability across Azure availability zones for increased SLA demands, Azure native backup and monitoring for HANA database, learn how enterprises are taking advantage of these features in their digital transformation journey!

Nearly every organization now understands that data is an important asset, yet virtually all struggle with the hard realities of efficiently managing and extracting value from their data. In this conversation, we'll bring a framework of common sense clarity and perspective to topics including Data Governance, Data Quality, Data Gravity, Monetization, Security, and Compliance, creating a framework of understanding you can use for your organization.


LUNCH
11:55AM-12:50pm


Security Panel
12:50-1:35pm
Fbi, splunk & Syntax

This panel will discuss "Lessons Learned: Today’s Security Breaches & Identifying Future Threats."

It is no longer a question of if but when your company will be attacked. Learn how to overcome the growing shortage and high cost of security talent and successfully secure your environment. Learn from the mistakes made by your peers and see how you can best identify your own potential security breach.

Find out why IT security is more than “checking the box” for audits.

In this panel discussion, you’ll learn:

  • That security breaches are a common story today and how to remediate them
  • How to best prevent future security threats
  • Why your security strategy needs many different layers
  • Why the operational part of security is so important

Every news headline you see and read is usually another security breach. Don’t let your company go down because you thought your company’s environment was secure.


Breakout Session #3
1:40-2:20pm
IBM, Tech Data & ePlus

One of the most powerful lessons IBM Security has come to understand is that every client is on their own unique security journey. Whether they’re putting the final touches on their maturity program, or just getting started, one thing is common - they all want to incrementally improve their security program. Mission accomplished does not exist in the space, and frankly it never will.

In order to close existing gaps, organizations need the right set of skills, tools, resources, and insights to help guide and gain clarity on focusing on the end goal of getting to a more optimized maturity level.

IBM Security provides analytics, AI and orchestration capabilities to understand, reason, learn, and respond to threats quickly and accelerate your journey to security maturity.

Optane, if you believe the marketing, delivers a "leap-frog” for HANA infrastructure with fantastic performance, rapid reboots and lower TCO. Do these new DIMMs deliver for HANA and how do you separate the reality from the hype?  Is there a better alternative? According to both SAP Insider and ASUG, the vast majority of SAP customers have not started the move to S/4HANA, but 2025 is rapidly approaching.  How can you assess the best way to get your enterprise moving forward? Want to try out S/4HANA Finance but paying for a sandbox environment is out of the question and without knowledgable guidance, is it worth it anyway? Find out how to get your sandbox and subject matter expertise rolled into one package at Syntax at no cost to your enterprise.

AI is the rage, and not just within the hallowed halls of Google, Facebook and other tech giants- it is permeating popular culture.   IBM Watson curated a daily list of top tennis moments from the US Open (crowd noise, and length of the point seemed to be the two criteria used to create the list) and while many organizations are interested in harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence, there is a healthy amount of skepticism (e.g., ambivalence) that keeps them on the sideline- the tech is too immature, it’s too risky (e.g., expensive), the return on investment is unknown, the business value is unclear.  This presentation debunks many of the myths around AI and provides a practical blueprint for how to realize value from AI, while minimizing real (and perceived) risk. 


Breakout Session #4
2:25-3:15pm
Clarkston consulting/Syntax, IDG (CIO Magazine) & Lenovo/nutanix

The move to SAP’s S/4HANA platform draws all kinds of reactions from customers. Some are excited to move and have business requirements that will be better fulfilled on “S/4”, yet others don’t see a business case that make the migration relevant at this time. Regardless of these diverse points on the pendulum, SAP has issued a decree that by 2025 all support for non-HANA databases will stop and only S/4HANA will be supported. Syntax wants to partner with you, our customers, when it comes to migrating and upgrading to this new platform. As part of this strategy, we are teaming with several industry specific SAP System Integrators and partnering with them to bring our customers a single thread to plan, execute, and support the eventual move to S/4HANA. Join us for a conversation on how we envision this goal.

The term “digital transformation” may be overused, but there’s no denying that the concept represents foundational change for IT leaders and the businesses they support. IDG, publisher of CIO.com and other leading technology sites, surveyed more than 700 IT decision-makers to understand where they are in their digital transformation journey, the challenges they’re facing, and the tangible benefits they’re beginning to capture as they adopt a digital-first business strategy. You’ll hear some actionable insights about the steps to take, the technology to invest in, and the skills required to pull off a successful transformation.

Learn how to have new IT conversations that help to “push the boundaries” from what the previous IT focus was, to the catapult that IT and digital transformation can help business to be.  Together with Nutanix, you will understand why Lenovo is the foundation for your noticeable business transformation. 


BREAK
3:05-3:15Pm


Closing keynote
3:15-4:00Pm
Jim Grubb, Chief Technology Evangelist, Cisco Systems

Jim Grubb will discuss "Living in a Digital World."

Businesses, governments, and organizations are facing one of the most significant inflection points in history driven by technology innovation. Jim will explain how the new technologies of Virtual and Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, The Internet of Things, Blockchain, Robotics, and others are being put to use to create new business models and processes. Leading organizations of the future will need to build the people, process, culture, and technology platform for continuous reinvention.

He will discuss the ways in which leading organizations are starting to gain traction with these new tools, and addressing the challenges of IT complexity, security, and privacy concerns. And finally, how Cisco helping its customers address these challenges.


Closing remarks
4:00-4:05Pm
Syntax emcee jim kunz

 

Visit the Registration Page to attend the Syntax Innovation Exchange.