On the road to LandWarNet
Once again, it's the week of LandWarNet, and for the fourth time in five years tropical weather is threatening on the horizon. Best predictor of hurricanes ever: the AFCEA event calendar.
Tropical Storm Fay, potentially a hurricane by this evening, is expected to give Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. a light shoulder-brush as it plows up the west coast of Florida. But three years ago, Hurricane Katrina was just a Category 1 when it entered town in the middle of the conference.
Of course, the weather was the center of much of the conversation at the boarding gate at BWI today--most of the Southwest flight I was on was packed with exhibitors and attendees headed south for LandWarNet. And it forced itself onto conversations at the opening reception, as drops of water fell from the skylights of the Broward County Convention Center's Atrium.
Many of the attendees arrived on Sunday, to attend today's Army invitation-only tracks. And some of them are headed out the door as I speak, in an effort to beat any weather-related delays tomorrow. One of those headed out early was Bob Titus, vice president of global converged solutions for NetCracker, who was on hand for Architecture Day today. I managed to get a few minutes with him and with John Kingsley, NetCracker's director of government business development, to talk about the company's role in the Army's Enterprise Infrastructure Management program.
Netcracker draws information from a variety of sources, including network and systems management tools, to create a repository of information about the usage and performance of networks, applications and hardware. By aggregating information, directors of information management can get an accurate picture of how assets are being used, track compliance issues and identify places where investments need to be made in software and infrastructure--as well as indentifying ways to reduce costs and avoid uneccesary expenditures.
Titus and Kingsley say that based on the Army National Guard's success with the software, the Army is rolling out NetCracker as part of its EIM program enterprise-wide; and DISA has been evaluating use of the software for similar purposes.
For more coverage on the 2008 LandWarNet Conference, click here.
Posted by Sean Gallagher on Aug 18, 2008 at 8:12 AM