IT Leadership Forum
The IBM IT leadership has been designed to provide students at the University of Manchester with an insight into the production and consumption of cutting edge technologies in an industrial context. It aims to bridge the gap between University teaching of advanced IT systems and its practice in industry. This will involve technical as well as non technical and management issues that relate to the systems development, integration and management processes.
The forum is open to all undergraduate and postgraduate students in the School of Computer Science and Manchester Business School. The lecture series is a compulsory element of a number of postgraduate courses in both schools. Anyone wishing to attend any lectures in the series may turn up at their chosen lecture(s) with no need to register.
The forum comprises a series of industrial guest lectures. One lecture will be delivered each week by different guest speakers from top IT companies such as Bloomberg, IBM and Hewlett Packard.
The ITLF takes place every week thoughout the first semester of each academic year. Each session usually runs between 1:30pm and 4:30pm and includes the following:
- Presentation (up to 90 minutes) by a different speaker each week.
- Questions and discussion (up to 45 minutes).
Please see below a list of the topics and companies who have contributed to the IT Leadership forum over the years.
Bloomberg
Bloomberg's founding vision in 1981 was to create an information-services,
news and media company that provides business and financial
professionals with the tools and data they need on a single,
all-inclusive platform. The New York-based company employs
more than 9,000 people in more than 125 offices around the
world. Bloomberg is about information: accessing it, reporting
it, analyzing it and distributing it, faster and more accurately
than any other organization. The BLOOMBERG PROFESSIONAL service,
the company's core product, is the fastest-growing real-time
financial information network in the world.
www.bloomberg.com
Bloomberg Representative: Stig Sorensen
Team leader within our Trading Systems group. Looking after development
for Fixed-Income Order Management.
Education: MEng Software Engineering (Hons) from UMIST graduated 2003.
Synopsis
What are some of the challenges faced when developing and maintaining
world wide real-time systems? How can we reduce operational risk?
Informed Solutions
Informed Solutions is a leading independent IS and IT professional services practice and Europe's foremost spatial information and systems consultants. They offer a fully integrated and complementary portfolio of impartial management consultancy, technical consultancy, leading edge solutions and system integration services.
www.informed.co.uk
Hewlett Packard
HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions
globally. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing
and access devices, global services and imaging and printing for consumers,
enterprises and small and medium businesses.
www.hp.com
Hewlett Packard Representative: Richard Taylor - Principal
scientist in Hewlett Packard Laboratories.
Richard Taylor is a principal scientist in Hewlett Packard Laboratories'
Systems and Services research group and a senior consultant within HP
Services. His primary areas of research focus on complex systems modelling,
analysis and design, with particular applications in electronic and information
systems, and the interfaces between economics, financial systems, business
processes and information technology provision.
IBM
IBM is the world's leading information technology and consulting services
company. They develop and manufacture some of the industry's most advanced
information technologies, including computer systems, software, storage
systems and microelectronics, translating these advanced technologies
into value for customers through professional solutions, services and
consulting businesses worldwide.
www.ibm.com
IBM Representative: Paul Verschueren
Paul Verschueren is Chair of IBM's Patterns Governance Board which is responsible
for developing the emerging discipline of "Patterns Based Engineering" (PBE)
within IBM. PBE combines Patterns techniques and Generative Programming
with the objective of achieving breakthroughs in development productivity
and quality.
Synopsis
Patterns Based Engineering.
Patterns Based Engineering is an emerging discipline which brings together
best practices of the Model Driven Development, Design Patterns, and
Agile communities. It also stresses the exploitation of new generative
tooling technologies ( "MetaTools") to allow for rapid automation
and prototyping.
Navis
Navis is the leader in proven, mission-critical solutions for managing
logistics, assets, inventory and cargo across the global supply chain.
Founded in 1988, Navis established itself as the first company to provide
automated container terminal operating systems (TOS) that improve velocity
and visibility of cargo movement through port and intermodal facilities.
www.navis.com
Navis Representatives: Peter Cosgrove and Tony Rees
Peter Cosgrove - Director of Professional Services,
EMEA & S.Asia
Since joining Navis in 2005, Peter, as Professional Services Director EMEA,
has overseen over 40 $multi million supply chain solution deployments providing
tangible benefits for Container Terminals.
Tony Rees - Director of Support Services, EMEA & S.Asia
Tony has worked in the information technology industry for thirty years
and has lived through the metamorphosis from mainframes to distributed
computing, client-server, and web hosted solutions. He has spent
the last three and a half years with Navis.
Synopsis
Globalisation and the Supply Chain.
The increase in multi-national companies penetrating new countries and
continents has created the demand for an increasingly efficient supply chain
network getting products to market at the right time and the right price.
Consumers expect better quality goods to be available cheaper and faster
and of course suppliers want to exploit access to cheaper manufacturing
and want to decrease the cost of storage and distribution.
NCC
The National Computing Centre (NCC) is the single largest and most diverse
corporate membership body in the UK IT sector. NCC delivers a continuum
of services including; independent and impartial advice and support, best
practice and standards, personal and professional development, managed
service delivery, awareness raising and experience sharing.
www.ncc.co.uk
NCC Representative: Paul Vlissidis - MBCS CEng CITP – Technical
Director, NCC Group.
With over 20 years experience in IT, Paul is a recognised expert on all
aspects of IT and Internet security. He provides the technical lead for
a large NCC team of ethical hackers on projects with national and international
corporations, public sector organisations, emergency services and local
authorities, testing network security and advising on technical and procedural
security and risk management.
Synopsis
The Information Theft Landscape: "An Ethical hacker's
perspective".
The workshop includes a discussions of the threats in the world of information
theft, as well as demonstrating the motivations for such activity and the
rewards that can be gained by unscrupulous attackers by viewing examples
of the black market in stolen information.
Sibilo
Sibilo is a Manchester (UK) based software house that specializes in
Information Management applications. Sibilo was founded in January 2002
by 4 entrepreneurs, including Ekin Caglar, who met in the University of
Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, doing research on the
next generation of databases and data mining, and working on high-profile
European projects.
www.sibilo.com
Sibilo Representative: Ekin Caglar
Within its 5 years of existence, Sibilo had sold compliance solutions to
multinational corporations and UK public authorities, as well as e-commerce
solutions to SMEs, and developed a unique software development model (SSDM)
that allows software and database to be created automatically from models
and diagrams.
Synopsis
Developing Enterprise Solutions.
The first half of the lecture is on theory of software development, with
many examples from the industry. In the second half, there are two case
studies: One on DataSmart, one of Sibilo ’s products, and the other
on MidasClothing.com, a Sibilo customer who managed to sell men’s
garments worldwide.