Introduction
Since May 1997, Software Strategies has become well known to enterprise IT users and vendors for the quality, relevance, value for money and professionalism of the many events which its principals have organised and presented. Some of these were previously under the auspices of the Enterprise NT Management Forum. Our events are always geared to bring together the best speakers from key enterprise vendors with audiences of top IT directors, strategists and decision makers from major enterprise IT user companies across the UK and northern Europe. Our goal is to enable a powerful and productive dialogue between providers and consumers in an atmosphere largely free of marketing hype, and focused on results. See our Past Event Profiles for many examples of these.

Software Strategies manages the whole lifecycle of these events, from initial concept through design, speaker recruitment, marketing, enrolment, delivery, and follow up. With our major emphasis on creating high quality, independent perspectives on each event theme, our audiences and vendor partners have continually rated our events very highly for their authoritative, trustworthy and definitive content and analysis, and also for the opportunities they provided for networking with peer customer and vendor executives.

Two main categories of events are included in our programmes:

1. Focus Events - Software Strategies Focus Events each cover a specific industry topic in much greater depth, with special efforts made to obtain highly qualified expert speakers in the topic area. These Focus Events have always struck a strong chord with participants, who invariably prefer to attend our non-partisan, multi-vendor perspective, analyst-moderated events, rather than the usual single vendor marketing seminars available. Using an intense one-day format, our Focus Events frequently draw 100+ delegates, who find them a highly effective vehicle for quickly gaining in-depth insight into the particular enterprise computing themes covered.

More Details
Current Focus Events

2. Conferences - These normally two-day events cover a broad theme at a high level, with a wide diversity of speaker perspectives. Aimed at a wide cross-section of the senior IT community, each of these events provides a snapshot of the state of the art in e-business infrastructure and Windows 2000, including the hottest topics of the day. Event goals are to advise, educate and inform participants about the issues, strategies and approaches to consider when developing IT plans for their companies. As experienced, specialised, independent analysts, Software Strategies is able to provide unbiased coverage, including consolidated user feedback, competitive positions, future trends and action summaries.

Opportunity to Hear From Expert Vendor Speakers
Software Strategies' Events bring top vendor experts within the chosen theme area, and our analysts together with senior IT personnel who are concerned with the strategic issues of the day, and eager to hear the most recent thinking and analysis, to learn what's hot and what's not, and to think through the consequences as they affect their own organisations. Because these events are planned and controlled by Software Strategies, specialist analysts, we can ensure that they are more objective, independent and lower in marketing hype, than typical vendor-run sales events. This has always been a hallmark of our events, and has earned us a high degree of delegate trust and respect in the industry.

Past Speaker Companies - Industry's Top Names
Leading e-Infrastructure vendors who have supported past Software Strategies events include:

Hype-Free Sessions
Our contacts and meeting delegates frequently tell us how hard it is to obtain hype-free, quality information about the choices they face, despite the welter of material now available via the Internet and other sources. We insist that our speaker organisations prepare presentations which advise, inform and educate about the principles, underlying architectures and issues, rather than simply trot out a series of standard sales presentations. Our vendor sponsor organisations are often uniquely positioned to provide this kind of invaluable information, and it can really make a difference to the decisions our delegates make. As one simple example, last year we heard from a senior Microsoft Partner company intimately involved with Windows 2000 development, who was able to share invaluable insights about the strengths, pitfalls and best-fit classes of application for the then-recently launched Windows 2000 product.

Our experience has shown many times that vendors whose speakers who stick to this brief and avoid the temptation to oversell their products and services, benefit enormously from the increased respect and stature afforded their organisations by this kind of education and advice. For this reason also, the style of these events is informal, and is carefully moderated by Software Strategies, with questions and interruptions from the floor encouraged where relevant, and speakers also being asked to seek audience participation and direct input during the course of each presentation.