The creators of the next generation of IT are at Structure 2013

As we spend more of our time (and money) online, information technology is becoming more than just a cost of doing business — it’s enabling an entirely new ways of doing business.

We see it clearly in companies such as Google or Facebook, where the cost of computing has a direct impact on the cost of goods sold. But it’s also becoming the case in banks, retail shops and other sectors of the economy where mobile,  digital or cloud strategies all are facets of the same issue: an attempt to wed the business to technology and an understanding that technology is the business.

We get it. That’s why this year’s Structure conference, on June 19 and 20 in San Francisco, will have speakers like Kevin Scott of LinkedIn. He’s going to share what he learned throughout the process of re-architecting the social networking site to brings its costs in line with its growing scale. Scott is part of a new generation of IT professionals who aren’t just trying to solve business problems with technology but are building architectures that are integral parts of the business.

Jeff Dean at Google is doing something similar — although he’s thinking at a much larger scale. The computer scientist who co-wrote the search giant’s MapReduce paper is responsible for rethinking Google’s architecture for the new era of the web, where the hardware and software must support real-time distributed systems, capable of interacting naturally with people. It’s a tall order, but he’ll talk about where IT is going and how to build systems that can handle that future.

Finally, we have a familiar face in a new role. Bob Muglia, who is the executive vice president of Juniper’s Software Solutions, will talk about how he plans to shift one of the innovators of the switching era as its business is disrupted by both the new OpenFlow protocol and the development of software-defined networking. Already, Muglia has forced the $ 9.65 billion company to change its business model and how it sells some of its hardware. He’ll discuss software-defined networks and what it means to be able to program the hardware infrastructure on demand and without having to physically touch the hardware.

The entire IT industry is poised between the promise of awesome opportunities as computing becomes cheaper and our ability to capture data expands, and the fear of disruption as open source hardware and new layers of abstraction threaten to tear down the barriers to entry. It’s a crazy time in IT and Structure speakers will help you capitalize on it, either from the business side or with deep dives into the future of technology. Register today so you can join us in San Francisco on June 19 and 20.

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