Open Data Center Alliance announces Forecast 2014 speakers, sessions, sponsors

The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) has announced the lineup of speakers and sessions for its upcoming Forecast 2014 conference. Now in its third year, ODCA's Forecast 2014 conference will be held September 22-24 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

The conference aims to bring enterprise data center and cloud services executives to the stage to share best practices and engage directly with event attendees. ODCA board members Reyk Bederke of T-Systems, Hiroshi Honjo of NTT Data, and Correy Voo of UBS will share their insights in building enterprise-class cloud environments. In addition, Shannon Poulin, data center vice president at Intel Corporation, will provide a keynote on his company's vision for acceleration of enterprise cloud services.

For the first time, the conference will feature a "hackathon" focused on cloud-aware application development. Sponsored by HP and Intel, the event will bring together teams of developers competing to create an application based on ODCA's best practices for cloud application development, specifically designed for a nonprofit organization. Teams of developers will be challenged to create an application on-site at the Forecast conference that will help nonprofit organizations match volunteers with their organizational needs.

Applications will be judged by an independent panel with an awards ceremony capping the Forecast conference. Representatives from the nonprofit community will be on hand to provide input on usability and participate in the judging process. For information about participating as a hackathon participant or nonprofit advisor, contact Bette Clem at [email protected].

The Forecast conference agenda also includes six proof of concept (PoC) sessions and seven ODCA U sessions from companies like Appnomic, Infosys, Moogsoft and National Australia Bank. PoC sessions are technical examinations of solutions delivered to align with ODCA usage model requirements. ODCA U is a series of courses designed to provide a "deep dive" on ODCA usage model requirements and learn directly from the IT leaders who crafted the organization's publications.

Some of the biggest names in cloud computing have signed on to sponsor the Forecast 2014 conference. The newest premium sponsors to join the ODCA'ss lineup are Citrix, Dell and Emerson Network Power. Diversity Limited, Mission Critical Magazine, Cloud Strategy, and The WHIR have signed on as media sponsors, while the Asia Cloud Computing Association, Distributed Management Task Force, and Storage Networking Industry Association have joined as collaborative sponsors.

Other premium sponsors are Appnomic, Capgemini, Intel, Hitachi, HP, SAP, Verne Global and VMware. For more information about sponsorship, contact Julia Torresan at [email protected].