So often as IT professionals we tend to focus on the technical aspects of a solution: choosing the best infrastructure design, plowing through the features and functions of a new piece of software, and so on. But every IT professional also has a critical role to play in the business discussion when you’re organization is evaluating new solutions. IT can be a driver of value directly to the business’s bottom line, saving your company time and money in the process. All you have to do is know how to present information in a way that your business counterparts can understand it. In this session of Backup 2.0 University, Joshua Hoffman will walk you through the process of calculating the ROI (return on investment) of technology solutions. With these tools in your belt, you’ll be empowered to present business ideas to your colleagues, and deliver value to your business. Joshua will also speak with Romi Mahajan, principal of the KKM Group, a global strategy and advisor firm specializing in information technology. Romi will discuss the importance of developing a common language between business and IT professionals, and mutual benefits that everyone can realize as a result.

Infrastructure migrations are often the largest projects IT pros will take on in their career. Whether upgrading to a new version, replacing hardware, or merging systems with a new partner, migrations are often complex, and have the potential to put your critical business data at risk. Join Joshua Hoffman for a discussion of how to integrate backup and recovery planning into your infrastructure migration project, helping to ensure that your data remains projected before, during, and after your migration project is complete. Joshua will also speak with IT industry consultant Mitch Chen, who shares his own expertise from the field to help your migration go as smoothly as possible.

The term “cloud computing” is thrown around quite a bit these days, yet it’s actual definition remains unclear to many. What’s the difference between a private cloud and a hybrid cloud? Is Software-as-a-Service the same is Infrastructure-as-a-service? And most importantly, how can cloud computing help me lower my IT costs, without putting my data at risk? In this session of Backup 2.0 University, Joshua Hoffman will help you demystify cloud computing, exploring the variety of approaches available to organizations today, and how cloud computing can begin to play a key role in your backup and recovery strategy. Joshua will also speak with Steve Riley, a senior technical program manager for Amazon Web Services. Steve will discuss the growing role that cloud computing is playing in the modern data center, and answer questions about its role in backup and recovery.

Where and how we store are data is almost as important as the data itself. After all, the best backups in the world will fail to meet our needs if the underlying storage architecture isn’t sound. Join Joshua Hoffman for a discussion of the variety of options that exist in storage architecture today, and how to make the best choice to meet the needs of your organization. Joshua will also speak with Joseph Hand, Senior Solutions Architect at Dell AppAssure Software, about modern trends in storage choices, how things have changed, and what the future has to hold.

Virtualization has helped revolutionize the data center – providing opportunities to consolidate infrastructure, decrease costs and simplify management for IT administrators. However, virtualization creates a unique set of challenges as organizations aim to protect the data and the applications hosted in their virtual environments. Join Joshua Hoffman as he discusses new approaches for the backup and recovery of virtual servers, and how administrators can rest assured that their critical information is protected. Joshua also speaks with Greg Shields, a Microsoft MVP and expert on virtualization, about the real world challenges of running a virtualized data center.

Throughout computing history, backups have been practical, simple procedures: Copy a bunch of data from one place to another. But this mentality, what MVP Don Jones calls the “Backup 1.0 Mentality” is killing businesses that have “always-on” data backup and recovery needs – like the databases used by Exchange Server and SQL Server.

Session 1 is about understanding how to move beyond the Backup 1.0 Mentality!

More and more companies are using Microsoft SQL Server these days—and in many cases, they don’t even realize it. While plenty of organizations deliberately install SQL Server, many businesses find themselves using SQL Server as a side effect, because SQL Server is the data store for some line-of-business application, technology solution, and so on.

Session 3 helps you rethink SQL Server Backups with a Backup 2.0 perspective. Joshua Hoffman speaks with Paul Randall to help you gain confidence in with SQL Server backups.

As one of the most popular solutions for corporate email, Exchange Server occupies a special place in your infrastructure. It’s expected to be “always on,” always available, and always reliable. Disasters simply can’t be tolerated. Discover how Backup 2.0 can better serve your Exchange Server backup needs. Special guest lecturer interview with Lee Benjamin.

Session 2 is about Rethinking Exchange Server Backups.

Meet Dell AppAssure CEO Naj Husain and Lead Geek Josh Hoffman as they clarify the business value of fast recovery times and no lost data.

As we continue rethinking server backups, a “wish list” starts to emerge. This is particularly so as we look at SharePoint Server Backups. Join Joshua Hoffman as he discusses items like new and better techniques, better restore scenarios, easier management and more. Joshua then speaks with Michael Noel about SharePoint Server Backups and the Backup 2.0 Revolution.