The spring Interop event kicks off in Las Vegas next week, and WAN optimization and application acceleration technologies promise to be well represented at the venerable networking trade show. To help you get the most from your Interop trip, here are a few conference sessions that stood out to me among the scores of options:

Application performance management
Tuesday, May 19
10:15 a.m. - 11:15 a.m.
This session will tackle the technologies and processes that IT organizations should implement to become more efficient at managing the infrastructure and better at managing the performance of key applications. The moderator is Jim Metzler of Ashton, Metzler & Associates (and co-author of Network World's Wide-Area Networking newsletter). Speakers include Doug Roberts from Fluke Networks, Matt Sherrod from NetQos, and Paul Ellis from CA.

A comparison of WAN optimization controllers
Tuesday, May 19
11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
There will be no PowerPoint presentations at this session, where leading WOC vendors will be asked questions to identify their products' similarities and differences. Metzler will moderate a panel including Apurva Dave from Riverbed Technology, Kenneth Salchow from F5 Networks, Mark Urban from Blue Coat Systems, Mark Weiner from Cisco, Peter Schmidt from Ipanema, and Satya Vardharajan from Citrix Systems.

The impact of IT virtualization on applications and networks
Tuesday, May 19
4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
In this session, vendors from different areas of IT will identify network technologies, designs and best practices that can help IT organizations enjoy the benefits of virtualization while sidestepping potential pitfalls. Kenneth Salchow from F5, Liad Ofek from Cisco, and Stephen Elliot from CA are on the panel.

How networks can assist application delivery
Wednesday, May 20
10:15 a.m. - 11:15 a.m.
Vendors have started to integrate functionality such as SSL processing and WAN optimization into network devices, and there have been efforts to run portions applications directly on switches and routers. The panelists at this session -- Gary Hemminger from Brocade, Greg Smith from Citrix, Mark Leary from Cisco, and Tim Richards from Juniper Networks -- will discuss the range of functionality that's being integrated into network devices, as well as the pros and cons of doing so.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.