Open Source and the Cloud coming to Hove
Our friends at Omnis Systems in Brighton are organising an event – Open Source, the Cloud and your Business – at Sussex County Cricket Club, Hove, BN3 3AN (map) on Tuesday 18th November.
Many organisations in the private, public, voluntary and community sectors are now starting to look seriously or are in part using “the Cloud” and Open Source technology. However, there is still some as to the business benefits that can be realised by using these tools.
Those who worry are not alone. Very often even IT resellers and consultants find it difficult to understand if they are offering the best solutions to their customers as they have limited visibility on what is available apart from the offerings from their standard vendors.
This seminar will be examining what Cloud and Open source technology actually are, how public and private sector organisations are using them and what business opportunities they offer. The seminar will also explore a few of the common myths that surround those technologies and get into some real life case studies on how organisations can benefit.
| Time | Description | Speakers |
|---|---|---|
| 09:00 / 09:30 | Registration & event presentation | |
| 09:30 / 10:00 | Cloud, Open Source or both? Understanding what “Cloud” really is. The definition, the services, the good, the bad and the ugly. There are very useful aspects of the Cloud to consider but there are also some issues that have security, economical and ethical impacts you may have not considered. | Paolo Vecchi Omnis Systems |
| 10:00 / 10:30 | How you could help the Public Sector in being more efficient by offering your services through G-Cloud and how we can help you getting there faster. | Chris Farthing Advice Cloud |
| 10:30 / 11:00 |
Providing “Cloud” services since before it was cool. Moving bits for UK businesses. |
Joe Kerr FastNet |
| 11:00 / 11:30 | Coffee break & time for networking/questions | |
| 11:30 / 12:00 | Securing your Cloud identity with Single Sign-On and strong authentication | Giuseppe Paternò SecurePass |
| 12:00 / 12:30 | Local Government representative from London talking about their experience with Open Source and Open Alliances that could be formed between organisations to share code and experiences (Awaiting confirmation and full speech description) | TBA |
| 12:30 / 13:30 | Lunch break and networking | |
| 13:30 / 14:00 | Technology Choices for Business Strategy
Businesses compete fiercely in a market changing ever faster. Public bodies too must deliver better for less. Their strategic response is to focus on users, iterate products, drive down costs, design for easy change, share knowledge and experience, and widen access to more kinds of suppliers and innovation. Find out how your technology choices can support business aims. Tariq Rashid, speaking in a personal capacity, previously leading on open source for the Cabinet Office. |
Tariq Rashid |
| 14:00 / 14:30 |
Open what? Does Open Source matter to my business? It may matter as, like it or not, you are using a lot of it but your suppliers don’t want to tell you. We will also look at examples of how IT resellers let down their customers by selling them the wrong solutions for the job and how Councils spend (badly?) our money… … and at a few tools, including Collax V-Cube & Business Server, that businesses can adopt to consolidate their IT infrastructure, simplify its management and reduce costs. |
Paolo Vecchi Omnis Systems |
| 14:30 / 15:00 |
Zarafa Communication Platform a safer & cost-effective way to communicate Zarafa has always been the best drop-in replacement for Microsoft Exchange but now is taking its ambitions further. With the inclusion of telephony, video conferencing, file & document sharing and many other features Zarafa is now ready to take on Office365 and GoogleApps. What’s the point? You can control your data & your privacy, integrate your applications and at the same time spend even less than by using general purpose Cloud applications. Zarafa Communication Platform can be installed on Linux distributions like RedHat, Ubuntu and Debian. In this presentation it will be shown running on Univention Corporate Server which allows you to manage your Linux based infrastructure using a professionally designed web interface. |
Marco Welter Zarafa |
| 15:00 / 15:30 | LibreOffice-from-Collabora provides an enterprise hardened and supported build of the world’s most popular Open Source ‘Office’ software LibreOffice. Large Corporate and Public Sector organisations now have a secure and long term supported alternative to proprietary Office software. | Tim Eyles Collabora |
| 15:30 / 16:00 | Coffee break, networking, QA | |
| 16:00 / 16:30 | Reducing costs and complexity. Open Source based solutions for Windows and Linux desktop virtualisation | Mike Trevor Cutter Project |
| 16:30 / 17:00 |
Entando, the most agile way to share informations and connect to the “Internet of Things” |
Rinaldo Bonazzo Entando |
| 17:00 / 17:30 | How Linux and Open Source platforms allow us manage millions of emails and contacts on our mailing and CRM solutions | Andrew Mann Synchromedia |
| 17:30 / 18:30 | QA, networking, beers, wine. |
Full details are available on the Omnis Systems website.
Register for the event via Eventbrite.
Your correspondent will be attending and will report back after the event.
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Chief scribe