CenturyLink announced its plans for a multi-city tour featuring industry analysts and select CenturyLink customers and executives to share technology insights and lessons learned with enterprise IT leaders about big data, cloud, security and customer-centric IT.

The Elevate events provide an opportunity for CenturyLink customers, prospects and partners to learn from industry experts about topics important to the disruption taking place in IT today. The series is co-sponsored by Alcatel Lucent and features CIO Magazine as a media partner.

The series kicks off in Boston on July 15 and continues in key North American and global markets through October 2015. The roundtable forums feature keynotes from leading industry experts, including CIO Magazine contributing editor Julia King, "Cloudonomics" author Joe Weinman and CenturyLink executives Shirish Lal, David Shacochis, David Mahon and Gary Gauba.

"CenturyLink meets regularly with enterprises to discuss IT challenges and how to find flexible, cost-effective solutions to help them stay relevant in today's ever-changing technology landscape," said Shirish Lal, chief marketing officer at CenturyLink. "We are excited to visit key markets to share real-world scenarios and lessons learned about some of the hottest IT topics currently being discussed among C-levels."

The forums will cover a range of topics, including:

  • Big Data: Join experts from the front lines of IT for insights on the best methods for fostering a business that thrives on data.
  • Security and Disaster Recovery: Gain insights from industry-recognized security, compliance and disaster recovery experts on protecting against cyber-attacks and shifting from a disaster recovery mindset to business resiliency.
  • Customer-Centric IT: Learn how IT leaders are transforming their cultures and teams from "infrastructure architects" to "customer experience architects" that can integrate "as-a-service" models rapidly and efficiently.
  • Cloud and DevOps: Participate in hands-on workshops about modern IT platforms that accelerate software development without compromising operations.
  • Data Center Trends: Discover how businesses can take advantage of changes expected to impact the data center industry over the next five years and beyond.