Speaker: Robert Youngjohns, President, North America Sales and Marketing and Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Corporation
Robert Youngjohns will share what drives the Microsoft Enterprise Vision of the Future and how business leaders can change the conversations they have to secure the place of technology in that future. Robert will also cover the role of consumer products and how they affect large enterprise organizations, the evolving nature of collaboration and the possibilities of virtualization. Executive discussion and Q&A will follow.

Speaker: Rich Karlgaard, Publisher, Forbes
The global recession and recovery has left wakes of creative destruction. Speed and hyper-competition rule the day. The 2007-2009 downturn exposed outdated business models, which are being consigned to history's dustbin faster than ever. New winners are emerging around the world. This accelerating rate of change will continue during the recovery because of ever-cheaper technology, global capital flows, mobile Internet distribution, expanding labor pools, and changing demographics.

At this speech, the Forbes publisher will discuss real-world examples of:

• Six innovation basics that are essential for every 21st century company
• Four innovation shockers practiced by tomorrow's likely leaders
• The social network boom and what it means for your company and career

The Next Wave of Productivity: Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 – 1:00pm - 2:00pm

Speaker: Betsy Frost Webb, General Manager, Online Services Marketing, Microsoft Corporation
As information work evolves in response to external trends and technological innovations, the tools for information work must evolve as well. Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010 continue to expand to support the changing requirements of businesses and information workers around collaboration, mobility and secure access to business data, while providing value, simplicity and integration throughout the Business Productivity Infrastructure stack. Join Besty Frost as she discusses how the latest versions of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 deliver the best productivity experience across the PC, phone and browser, to help businesses improve productivity while increasing organizational impact and results with the best experience for accessing, analyzing, and sharing business information.

Speaker: Ron Markezich, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Online
With almost 15 years’ experience running some of the largest, most reliable cloud services in the world; Microsoft is the leader in cloud computing that spans businesses, governments and consumers. Many of the Microsoft products you already know and trust are now available as a version in the cloud. Join Ron Markezich, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Online, as he outlines Microsoft’s overall Cloud Computing strategy. A flexible set of cloud-based business solutions, including communications, collaboration, data storage, platform and infrastructure services – on-premises, all in the cloud, or a mix based on your business needs. With Microsoft, businesses can have the power of the cloud without compromising the privacy, security or control that they have come to expect from business software.

Speaker: Melvin Flowers, Corporate Vice President, Internal Audit, Microsoft Corporation
Business leaders are under increased pressure to make decisions quicker in order to keep pace with market changes and competition. Today they have more data than ever, however it is often difficult to get to and management teams spend too much time trying to determine what data is accurate and how that data can be used to help in decision making. Melvin will discuss how the right conversation between the CIO and the CFO can turn data into powerful information that management teams can use to stay focused on the tough task of making timely business decisions.

Speaker: Hon. Reg Alcock, Executive in Residence, I.H. Asper School of Business
For three decades forward looking public sector managers have been identifying opportunities for significantly improving the delivery of public services using ICTs. In the early days projects delivered significantly less than planned, took longer to deliver than promised, and cost significantly more than budgeted. In those early days the reasons were often technological. Buggy software, poor integration of data, and inadequate transmission were but a few of the reasons. Over the years these problems have been largely resolved. Today the technology can deliver, and we can identify a number of elegant solutions to transactional types of services yet it is difficult to identify the larger structural changes that have been observed in the private sector and long promised in the public sector.

As we move on to Web 2.0, 3.0, the semantic web, cloud computing, SOS, etc. it might be helpful to think through why the public sector is having such trouble achieving the benefits offered by Web 1.0

Speaker: John Wright, Senior Vice President, Ipsos-Reid
What are the captains of Canadian industry thinking - and worrying about - post recession and into the breach of global competition? John Wright reviews trends and what is going on in Canada and beyond.

Changing the Game with Dynamic IT
Thursday, May 13, 2010 – 2:45pm - 3:45pm

Speaker: Bill Laing, Corporate Vice President, US-Windows Server and Solutions Division, Microsoft Corporation
Virtualization and Cloud computing are some of the most talked about trends in technology today but how can you chart the right path for your business? Bill Laing will share his perspective on how technologies like virtualization and cloud computing can help evolve IT from a cost center to an agile strategic asset. Bill will share insights into where Microsoft is making investments to bring new technologies to market to enable IT to make a major impact on the bottom line and productivity – especially critical in today’s challenging global economy.

Closing Keynote: Maximizing Your Microsoft Investment
Thursday, May 13, 2010 – 3:45pm - 4:45pm

Speaker: Norman Judah, Chief Technology Officer, Worlwide Services, Microsoft Corporation
Norm Judah is the Chief Technology Officer of Worldwide Services, focusing on technology management and enterprise service strategy. His approach to services is to act as a technical conscience and leader, ensuring technical excellence across the entire solution cycle. Driving technical process and major design reviews, Judah champions technical approaches and methods that reduce risk and assure high quality, on-time delivery, while keeping the technical community fresh and on the leading edge. In this presentation, Norm will focus on the architectural discontinuities that continue to drive both innovation and opportunity. The next wave of these discontinuities exist throughout the enterprise, for example, within Mobile Platform, Virtualization, User Interface, Software plus Services and Cloud Computing. Each one of these have implications relevant to how we design, build, deploy and manage applications, and in particular, the application architecture. As part of this presentation, Norm will present a glimpse ahead and vision for the future of computing and collaboration.

Microsoft Cloud Continuum – From Private Cloud to Public Cloud
Thursday, May 13, 2010 – 9:45am - 10:45am
Thursday, May 13, 2010 – 1:30pm - 2:30pm

Speaker: Ryan Storgaard, Director Cloud Strategy, Microsoft Canada
As Canadian businesses and governments look to embrace cloud computing, many find they need to build and plan for private cloud in addition to, or instead of, public cloud. Microsoft approach to cloud computing provides products, technologies and offerings for both public and private clouds. Each type of cloud environment is based on traditional cloud concepts of being highly virtualized, managed in a consistent manner, dynamic and elastic scalability, and focused on the delivery of services.

Join Ryan Storgaard, Director of Cloud Strategy at Microsoft Canada, to discuss how Microsoft’s approach to private and public cloud provides a flexible, and familiar, infrastructure and platform across clouds.

Interoperability and Standards: Enabling Innovation
Thursday, May 13, 2010 – 9:45am - 10:45am

Speaker: John Weigelt, National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada
Canadian businesses are increasingly employing technology that enables innovation as they emerge from the economic reset. Innovation in both their internal processes as well as those products and services they provide to their worldwide customers. Standards and Interoperability are often overlooked, but critical elements that help organizations expand their reach across all parts of their business and reach the broadest customer community possible. Join John Weigelt, Microsoft Canada National Technology Officer for a discussion on how interoperability and standards act as strategic business enablers for Canadian businesses, simplifying interactions between communities and helping to grow business particularly with innovations around three screens and the cloud.

Environmental Sustainability – The time to Move to a Sustainable and Green IT is Now
Thursday, May 13, 2010 – 9:45am - 10:45am

Speaker: Francois Ajenstat, Senior Director, Environmental Communications, Microsoft Corporation
Concerns about the economy, coupled with regulatory compliance and unpredictable energy prices are increasing pressure to bring operating costs down. In addition, unprecedented public awareness of environmental issues means there is a social dividend to be gained by organizations that go green, including being able to attract great talent. Businesses are rapidly responding to the growing requirement for greater environmental stewardship by defining goals that will improve corporate environmental practices. Microsoft is committed to developing technology that helps consumers and businesses reduce their environmental footprints. Microsoft believes in using technology and event sponsorship to minimize environmental impact and in helping people around the world to develop green
software solutions.

This session will highlight Microsoft’s leadership and innovation in delivering green software solutions that deliver significant savings through a combination of energy conservations, improved workflow that help you manage energy efficiency, streamline deployment as well as reduce risk and liability associated with governance. You will also learn about our internal programs and best practices for improving our sustainability scorecard.

HealthVault – Personal Health Information Management
Thursday, May 13, 2010 – 9:45am - 10:45am

Speaker: Peter Jones, Industry Market Development Manager, Microsoft Canada & Peter Neupert, Corporate Vice President Health Solutions Group, Microsoft Corporation
Partner: Telus
This session will outline the benefits of Healthvault for government organizations, health regions, hospitals, insurers and commercial employers. HealthVault is an online personal health database that interfaces with third parties to create valuable health, wellness, and fitness services. HealthVault lets people consolidate their health information into one easily accessible account to help them become more informed and active in managing their health. Through HealthVault and the growing ecosystem of connected, patient-friendly applications, people can store copies of their health records obtained from several sources; upload information from health and fitness devices; provide their information to healthcare providers, coaches, and trainers; and access products and services. This can benefit employers, employees and communities. Individuals can play a more active role in their wellness and collaborate with their care providers to make faster, more informed decisions by creating a consolidated view of all their personal health data. This integrated platform will also enable individuals to share their health data with their family and with healthcare providers, helping to guide healthier care and lifestyle choices.

Partner Solution: Telus Healthspace – Powered by Microsoft Healthvault.

Online Financial Services: A Vision of the Future, Achievable Today
Thursday, May 13, 2010 – 9:45am - 10:45am

Speaker: Sujan Menezes, Financial Services Industry Market Development Manager, Microsoft Canada
Partner: Accenture
Financial Institutions are facing an evolution in how their customers want to be contacted and serviced. In today’s world a customer is always connected. Customers are increasingly indicating that the online channel is their preferred channel for interacting with a Financial Institution. An integrated customer experience is the key to outpace the rapid commoditization of an institution’s products and services.

For those Financial Institutions embracing this trend, the key is developing an entire online brand strategy that will define a new, ground breaking path to attracting and retaining customers in the new Web-based consumer world.

This session will provide a glimpse into what a Financial Institution’s online presence could look like to its customers in five years time and showcase how this vision can be achieved today. The timely intersection of technology trends and customer preferences make this the right time to invest in the online channel and drive differentiation, innovation and ultimately growth. Learn how to make this vision a reality for your business.

Multi-Channel Retail – Connected Commerce Solution
Thursday, May 13, 2010 – 9:45am - 10:45am

Speaker: Alicia Samuel, Retail Industry Market Development Manager, Microsoft Canada
Partner: Accenture/Avanade
Consumers are spending more time online than ever before. True cross-channel, multi-channel capabilities will improve customer service and enhance the online and in-store shopping experience with seamless integration to back-end line-of-business applications.

Avanade and Accenture’s Connected Commerce Solution builds on the Microsoft vision of connected retail experiences. This solution provides an enterprise eCommerce platform for delivering connected shopping experiences across all retail channels. The solution leverages Microsoft technologies to deliver engaging, integrated multi-channel experiences for customers. Through our unique alliance, Accenture and Microsoft are working with Avanade to create an enhanced, engaging user experience that will bring shoppers back again and again.

This session will highlight a multi-channel retail  solution that uniquely positions retailers to:

• Connect with customers by through a growing number of sales channels, while building customer loyalty and enhancing your brand
• Connect with retail systems by lowering operating costs and improving customer service by providing tighter integration between in-store and online shopping experiences
• Deliver high-quality commerce projects with proven strategies, methodologies, solution acceleration tools and expertise
• Utilize a  commerce platform for cross-channel execution, content management, and seamless integration with existing line-of-business applications

Catch The Next Wave of Productivity with the Customer Immersion Experience
Thursday, May 13, 2010 – 9:45am - 10:45am
Thursday, May 13, 2010 – 11:00am - 12:00pm
Thursday, May 13, 2010 – 1:30pm - 2:30pm

Speaker: John Rutledge, Solution Sales Specialist, Microsoft Canada
Would you buy a car without test driving it, or make an offer on a home without first going to the open house? What if you could have a similar experience when purchasing or deciding to deploy enterprise software? Experience firsthand how Microsoft’s Business Productivity solutions can help to drive organizational efficiencies, reveal new business insights and empower teams to collaborate seamlessly. In this session, a business productivity expert will lead you through tangible business scenarios where every participant plays an active role. Throughout the immersive hands-on simulation you and your peers will be encouraged to engage in an open dialogue and relate your experiences back to challenges within your own organization. In order to guarantee a highly interactive experience, each session is limited to eight participants at a time so register quickly!

Speakers: Omar Rashid, Business Development Manager, Microsoft Canada & David Boyle, Director, Information Technology & Services Centre, Wellington Township
One of the major challenges faced by Municipal Governments is the lack of a total enterprise solution to automate the business processes that support the many unique services they provide.  Over the last two decades Municipal Governments have responded by applying solutions designed primarily for other industry segments, combining them with point solutions to address specific Line-of-Business needs. As Citizen Service expectations expand to 24x7 on-line access and Municipalities drive to reduce service delivery costs, the existing architectures and software technologies are challenged to provide true end-to-end services across multiple business units while maintaining a single view of the customer.  So the time is right for a forward looking Government Service Centre; one that combines constituent access to services with back-end process automation to both improve service delivery and reduce cost. Join us as we look at one Canadian municipality’s innovative approach to the challenge with Microsoft Dynamics and the Citizen Services Platform.  Centre Wellington Township is currently implementing Microsoft’s xRM development framework in a multi-year program to deliver high quality Line-of-Business applications, reduce integration overhead, and move toward integrated, cost effective e-government services.

Speaker: Rich Reynolds, GM Windows, Microsoft Corporation
How do I keep mobile users productive? Should I embrace cloud services? Should we go with Rich or Thin Clients? Business leaders are faced with this question every day. Come hear why organizations are choosing to migrate to an optimized Windows desktop to answer their critical business questions. This business value focused session will showcase how Windows 7 can help your organization save money through streamlined management, increased end-user productivity, and improved IT security. The session will also cover how organizations are leveraging application and desktop virtualization to simplify and accelerate their OS migration.

Speaker: Dave Miller, Director, Dynamics Sales and Marketing, Microsoft Canada
Partner: CGI
Gartner has recognized Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Customer Relationship Management) as one of the fastest growing solutions of its kind in the market today. Traditional CRM has been all about Customer Relationship Management. Today, the most progressive companies are using Dynamics CRM to manage everything from financial services to case files to government grants to entertainment talent and much more. Dynamics CRM makes this possible using a highly flexible development platform – xRm – allowing you to rapidly create and deploy unique Line of Business (LOB) applications that integrate with your current infrastructure and leverage your existing IT investments. Join us for an informative session on how xRm can help transform your business. Hear about real customer examples from a leading global systems integrator on how Dynamics CRM can be used to develop high value LOB applications in areas as financial advisor services, case management and talent management.

Speaker: LouisDore, Manufacturing Industry Market Development Manager, Microsoft Canada
Partner: OSISoft
A world of common challenges confronts Manufacturing, Process, Metals & Mining and Pulp & Paper customers today. Rising production and energy costs, optimizing existing assets, coordinating worldwide systems and facilities created by mergers and acquisitions and ever-changing compliance and regulatory requirements are but a few. Investments, due to the current economic conditions, must be near zero risk and carry real payback. Even incremental improvements become extremely important and more critical than ever. Something as simple as optimizing a process unit to run more energy-efficiently creates meaningful savings. This presentation will demonstrate how software tools and a methodical approach can be used to indicate the bottom-line value delivered by leveraging real-time data and implement hundreds or even thousands of similar, small, and sustainable process improvements. The result can lead to energy efficiency, fast, reliable product-grade changes and condition-based maintenance to help you realize your operation’s full potential.

Speaker: David Epp, Energy Industry Market Development Manager, Microsoft Canada
Partner: Avanade
Delivering a major capital project on time and on budget is a challenging endeavour. Whether building a power plant, a pipeline or a factory, effective management and control of the project is the key to success. Successful project execution requires a modern business platform to provide accurate, comprehensive and timely information that can be shared across everyone within the organization. The platform must also allow collaboration with external partners and suppliers in a secure and controlled manner.

This session will showcase the ‘Capital Projects Workspace’, a solution that enables management of the entire capital project investment life cycle, from strategic portfolio decisions through to construction and commissioning. A single synchronized project database delivers the reliable source for all schedules, status reports, and issue tracking. A Web-based interface provides secure role based access from anywhere. Collaboration tools and workplaces allow partners, contractors and stakeholders, to exchange both structured and unstructured information (data, drawings, 3D models, etc.) in a secure and controlled manner.

Learn how the ‘Capital Projects Workspace’ can help your organization effectively manage and control capital projects.

Speaker: Jean Scott, Federal Government Industry Market Development Manager, Microsoft Canada
Partner: non-linear creations
Social networking sites continue to gain traction in our daily lives in how we communicate, consume and share information. There is, however, more to social networking than Twitter and Facebook and organizations are starting to explore how to leverage social networking tools and practices in the enterprise. Not only do newly hired “Generation Y” employees expect to have familiar, easy-to-use communications tools in the workplace but those same tools can help lead to user-driven innovation, increased productivity and the breaking down of silos in your organization.

While social media are increasingly being used for customer engagement and citizen outreach, this session will focus more on how social networking tools can be used to improve employee engagement and the business value that can be derived from this.

This session will:

• Explore emerging trends
• Give a real “how to start” road map for building the framework to benefit from social networking
• Provide some lessons learned from clients, both private and public sector, in this new, fast moving space.

Speaker: Roy Sharples, Account Technology Specialist, Microsoft Canada
For several decades, many Canadian industries tended to focus on efficiency and cost reduction to improve the bottom line. Though today, innovation is becoming more and more top of mind throughout both public and private sectors. More and more organizations are innovating to drive revenue growth, market share and competitive advantage. Business strategies to innovate involve people, process and systems.

Microsoft’s innovation solution is designed to help convert knowledge and ideas into new or improved business models, products, processes and services to gain a competitive advantage. This solution achieves these goals in a creative way by fostering innovation, through capturing, evaluating, and developing ideas to conclusion. This offering, coupled with Microsoft’s unique partner ecosystem with its extensive portfolio of offerings, capabilities and capacity to execute, contributes some of the essential technology-enablers to support the overall business framework for innovation.

This session provides an overview of the emerging role of innovation as a core organizational capability, Microsoft’s innovation point of view and solution offering and some of the key breakthrough solutions that our partners have brought to market to help customers gain sustainable business value from.

This session will cover:

• The CEO agenda and understanding the role of innovation within your organization.
  
• The emergence of innovation as a core capability within the Canadian DNA.
  
• Seeing the world as it should be and designing solutions to problems that can’t really be found in past experience.
  
• How to use Microsoft’s innovation solution as an alternative approach that utilizes actionable tools to build an innovative structure and to solve problems by designing solutions that inspire innovation.
• Building integrated innovative solution capacity throughout our partner ecosystem, and real life examples of innovations delivered.
• Open Q&A

Speaker: John Weigelt, National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada
Government 2.0 brings the social networking and integration advantages of Web 2.0 to government. Through the integration of tools such as wikis, blogs, government specific social networking sites, Bing Maps and RSS feeds, government services delivery to businesses and individuals becomes more effective, transparent and timely. Government 2.0 is not only transforming how government does business, it is having a dramatic impact on how business and individuals interact with their government. Join Microsoft Canada’s National Technology Officer as he discusses the trends associated with Gov 2.0, the technologies that support it and its impact on organizations.

Speaker: Jeremy Chapman, Senior Product Manager Windows Client, Microsoft Corporation
Many organizations have seen several benefits including cost savings by adopting a modern desktop and deploying Windows 7. Your organization may be planning to deploy Windows 7 to enable your end users to be more productive, provide tools for IT to support your business more securely, protect corporate data, or achieve cost efficiencies. Whatever the reason this session will help you by focusing on how to effectively prepare your organization for a Windows 7 deployment and how avoid common and sometimes costly mistakes.

Speaker: Omar Rashid, Director, Local & Regional Government, Microsoft Canada & Shafik Jiwani, EVP of Global GIS Business Development, Rolta Canada
Partner: Rolta
Where do Geographic Information Systems (GIS) go from here? Breaking free from the desktop, moving through mash-ups and web services, GIS is poised to ubiquitously integrate with knowledge assets and evolve to a Geospatial Business Intelligence System. And for John Q Public... they'll find themselves using GIS in more and more places... without knowing it.

During this presentation, we will take a journey across continents of geography and data, from Qatar to Canada, from Excel to SharePoint, as we assess the impact that spatially-enabled Business Intelligence can have on organizational efficiency, and on client success.
We will start our journey in Qatar, with Ashghal (Public Works Authority). Rolta’s CAPRMS (Capital Project Request Management System) fuses Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, SQL Server and the core GIS engine from ESRI to give Ashghal the geographic IQ to automate many processes and increase efficiency.

We will then continue to the Province of Ontario in Canada, to investigate the power of geospatial business intelligence in economic development. In today’s global economy, the ability to attract industry grows more and more competitive. SelectOntario is a dynamic geospatial business intelligence tool that showcases the provinces many assets (investment properties, infrastructure, location advantages, workforce skills, etc) helping investors find value in settling in Ontario. The solution leverages Rolta’s multi-lingual and highly configurable geospatial framework OnPoint, along with Bing maps for enterprise, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), SQL Server, Silverlight, and the core GIS engine from ESRI.

The world is awash in brilliant technologies like SharePoint, OnPoint, Bing, etc. Each becomes a member of a championship team when they work together as one. Witness how we've assembled several such "championship teams".

Speaker: Glenn Berg, Public Sector Industry Market Development Manager, Microsoft Canada
Partner: Navantis
Many organizations are facing financial constraints in today’s economy. Being able to quantify and justify the impact of investments has become mandatory in order to secure funds for business investment. As well, being able to compete for talent against competitors is important to be successful. In the case of Government, the ability to address increases in the demand for services without needing to increase taxes is a reality in today’s economy.

This session will review the perspectives of key Analysts from Gartner and Forrester pertaining to the Economic Justification for Microsoft Productivity tools. We break out the details of their studies and methods to measure the financial impact of using Microsoft Productivity tools in an organization and the benefits they can achieve. As part of this session, several Canadian organizations with publicly available financial data will be used to highlight these outcomes and their impact on the organization. This session will also include a demonstration of the Green Meeting solution from Navantis which is an applied example of how cost and environmental (carbon) savings can be measured from the use of Microsoft Productivity tools.