Inaugural AppCon 2007 Conference a Hit According to Attendees, Speakers and Sponsors

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- ApplicationContinuity.org, a virtual community that disseminates and publishes information about business- critical infrastructure application and data reliability, was applauded by attendees, speakers and sponsors for delivering a successful inaugural conference, AppCon 2007(TM). The event took place Sept. 13-14 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose and brought together more than 200 business and IT executives focused on assuring high availability for the mission-critical applications that power their businesses. AppCon 2007 fostered an exchange of information, in-the-trenches case studies, and solutions for email and messaging continuity, telecommunications and network reliability.

Steve Lewis, CEO of Teneros and chairman of this year's conference, kicked off AppCon 2007 with the conference's introduction, followed by CompuCom's CTO, David Hall, who delivered the keynote. The conference featured 22 industry experts, analysts and journalists who discussed the issues and challenges around delivering 24/7 application continuity. Noted speakers included Craig Flower, Hewlett Packard's global IT senior vice president, and Vaino Narma, executive director of client systems and development for Goldman Sachs, both of whom addressed continuity strategies for the enterprise that are also applicable to the mid-market. AppCon 2007 also highlighted "From the Trenches" speakers that included mid-market IT directors and CIOs who explained how they solved high availability and disaster recovery for their business critical systems.

"This conference exceeded our expectations, both in terms of the interactive presentations from the speakers and the feedback from the attendees," said Kelly Harray, ApplicationContinuity.org conference organizer. "There has never been a conference that has solely focused on the needs of IT professionals who are responsible for assuring application continuity, and we will continue the valuable discussions begun at AppCon 2007 on the ApplicationContinuity.org Web site throughout the year and at AppCon 2008. The goal of our virtual community is to have a meeting ground for collaboration on critical application continuity issues."

Attendee evaluations called out "The Great Debate" as one of the highlights of the conference in which a panel of industry press and analysts debated the topic of application (hosted) services vs. in-house solutions for high availability. Panelists included Arun Taneja, founder and president of the Taneja Group; Gary Chen, senior analyst in Yankee Group's Enterprise Research Group; Steve Norall, senior analyst with the Taneja Group; Doug Dineley, executive test center editor of InfoWorld; Eric Knorr, InfoWorld's editor-at-large; and Stephanie Jordan, editor-in-chief at Messaging News. The debate was moderated by Gregory Ness, industry pundit and vice president of marketing for BlueLane Technologies.

"'The Great Debate' added a fresh element to the conference. It was high- energy exchange where two teams argued their side of the topic," Taneja said. "Individuals from the audience were encouraged to share their unique perspectives and questions. This was a nice departure from the standard panel sessions I have seen at industry conferences. I look forward to seeing what they come up with to top this next year."

Attendee, Donough Deutsch, director of network systems at Aeropostale said, "AppCon 2007 was an informative conference that focused specifically on business continuity. I enjoyed the short vendor presentations because they had a strong market focus and found the customer stories beneficial because the speakers shared product comparisons and how they ultimately chose their company's application continuity solutions. It was a worthwhile conference and I, or members of my team will attend next year."

ApplicationContinuity.org welcomes qualified individuals with a perspective on the topic of application and data continuity to submit articles and manuscripts, article proposals, outlines or other forms of communication that may be shared over the Web. Go to http://www.applicationcontinuity.org/html/policies.asp for more details.

About ApplicationContinuity.org

ApplicationContinuity.org exists as a virtual community that seeks to bring together information, ideas, and opinions from interested persons and organizations. ApplicationContinuity.org publishes information on application survivability and reliability, with a primary focus on messaging and email continuity, telecommunications and network continuity along with information on strategies to ensure high availability and disaster recovery of business critical applications.