Over 6,500 active IT buyers from every industry and across all sizes of companies attended Interop last month to experience innovation coming out of the IT industry. We would like to thank the exhibitors for showcasing their company’s solutions to attendees actively investing in technology solutions — creating excitement on the show floor and accelerating the buying process.
Over 20,000 leads were generated on the expo floor from business technology decision makers from organizations like Accenture, Deutsche Telekom, Oracle, US Navy, State Farm, WebMd, Northrop Grumman, ABC Television, JCPenney Co., General Dynamics, C-SPAN, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Kaiser Permanente, Nike, Tyco Electronics, Pfizer, NBA, New York Life Insurance Company, Visa, Inc., Warner Bros. Entertainment, Bloomberg LP, REI, JPMorganChase, KPMG, TIME Inc., WPP Group, ESPN, BAYER Corporation, ADP, Cablevision and Wells Fargo.
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Sitting in the media center looking out over the Interop New York exhibit floor, it’s apparent that there are a lot of folks here looking for answers to their business and technology questions. I haven’t spent the entire day on the floor (you can see my conference posts for evidence of that) but I do have a few impressions after walking around and talking to people for a while.
First, while there is a mobile networking section of the exhibit floor, it’s not as large as I would have imagined. That’s not because there aren’t mobile apps and services here, but because mobility is increasingly a function within larger applications and technologies — a feature rather than a category. That’s an interesting evolution, with some fairly significant ramifications for companies. It’s also a sign, I think, that “mobile” is become the accepted way of doing business rather than an exception to the rule. As one of the speakers pointed out today, “Business is becoming some thing you do, rather than someplace you go.”
Next, security remains huge. A piece of that is companies trying to figure out how to secure all those mobile users, but there are other things at work, too.
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Cloud computing represents the biggest shift in computing of the last decade. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what clouds can do, because cloud computing will forever change how we perceive technology. According to Gartner, vendors must clarify cloud strategies in the next 12 months, while IT organizations must demand cloud road maps from vendors today. The cloud has moved from an early adopter concept to a must have and IT leaders are demanding clear, concise information. Continue Reading »
Interop New York 2009 is just around the corner. And for those eagerly awaiting the conference, I wanted to give a quick preview of what’s to come. As the track chair for both the data center and green IT tracks, I had the opportunity to develop the agenda and recruit speakers and panelists. While the sheer volume and quality of submissions made this a challenging task, a number of themes emerged which served as the basis for the final agenda. I’d like to describe these themes and how we plan on addressing them in November.
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Indulge me for a moment, because I’m about to use an analogy that has particular resonance for parents. Years ago, when our son was young, someone told us that the bond between parents and children was not like a rope of fixed length, but like a yo-yo string or rubber band. The child, you see, will be overtaken by a need for independence and rush away from the parents, only to realize that it can be scary “out there”, at which point they rush back into your embrace. It’s a dynamic that’s repeated over and over again through their lives — our son is now in his early twenties, and we can still see the yo-yo string at work.
While this is touching, what does it have to do with business I.T.?
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The good folks at Lifehacker (one of my favorite web sites) are asking their readers to show off mobile workspaces. I think it’s a great idea. I’m writing this from Terminal A at Dulles (connected thanks to Boingo, one of the truly great services for road warriors), and I’ll get a photo of my workspace up after I hit the ground again.
Here’s an interesting thought, though: I have different bags for different purposes: The bag holding my “office” today is different than the one I carry to most client offices, is different than the one I carry when I’m on multi-media assignment. How about you? One bag that you love and carry everywhere, or bag as a tool adapted to different jobs? Inquiring minds, and all that…
I know it’s not fashionable, but I have to leave a post about what I was doing eight years ago today. I was, in fact, at the show that was known as Networld/Interop in Atlanta. It was the show’s opening day, and I was heading up the judging for the Best of Interop awards in my role as managing editor for reviews at Internet Week. I was putting together the network in the judging room, and when I went to see if I had a connection to the Internet, I tried the CNN.com web site…and saw the very first report that an airplane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. It was only a short time before we realized that things were getting very bad, and I remember the various emotions as the opening of the show was postponed and impromptu meetings were held in hotel lobbies all over Atlanta.
I ended up driving back to Florida that afternoon with my colleague and friend Dave Brambert. We listened to radio stations all the way down the state of Georgia and into Florida, hearing new information (and a lot of speculation) along the way. I remember being struck by the speed of the cars and trucks on the interstate that day — I-75 is usually a racetrack, but everyone–everyone–was driving at the speed limit or below on that September day. When I talk with others, it’s things like that — the small things — that folks tend to remember most vividly. We live, most often, in the details, though our planning and imagining tends to focus on the “greater” issues.
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I’ve been attending Interop now since 1992 and working as a volunteer since 1995. While the proverbial crystal ball has sometimes been cloudy, Interop has consistently given me glimpses of the things to come. Most of the time it’s been in little tidbits that a CEO has accidentally let slip, or a widget in a booth being talked about by the development engineer.
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Eric Zeman’s blog post at InformationWeek looks at a recent survey finding that iPhones are the most popular devices at Internet cafes. Now, I’m interested in this result for a couple of reasons. The first is that I don’t really think of my iPhone as a WiFi device. I know it grabs the WiFi signal in my office, and it asks in other places, but that’s not how I really think of the handheld unit. I’m willing to admit that this could be one of my personal limitations, but there it is — the iPhone, to me, is a communications device rather than a WiFi device.
The next interesting thing from the report is the locations; Internet cafes. I’ve never done any work from an Internet cafe. Regular cafes, coffee shops, bookstores, restaurants, and airports — yes. It’s not that I have anything in particular against Internet cafes, though the prices have seemed rather steep for the service you tend to get, but I’d just rather compute from a location with good coffee and the occasional snack.
I keep hearing people talking about ditching their laptop computer in favor of an iPhone with a solid WiFi connection. I’ve blogged from my iPhone (though it’s not how I wrote this post), but I can’t imagine running my business from the phone. I wouldn’t mind a smaller, lighter computer, but I don’t mind toting my MacBook Pro with me everywhere I go — especially since it often lives in the bag with my camera, video camera, and audio recorder. The fact is that I don’t think my thumbs are fast enough/ well-enough coordinated to make writing a long-term possibility.
Does this make me an old guy? Probably, but it’s not the only thing. What about you? Will you be able to handle your Interop duties with nothing more than a smartphone and an Internet connection? If not, what will keep you away from a smartphone-only strategy? Let me know — I’ll be the old guy sitting with a computer in the corner of the room, waiting for the young folks to finish their phone-related tasks.
I’ve got some other thoughts on this, but I’ll wait until next time. In the meantime, do let me know what you think — I’m genuinely curious.
There’s nothing like heading to the beach to make me think of…Interop! (Yeah, I know, I’m a sick puppy — but hang with me for a few minutes…) Actually, it was the way yesterday unfolded that made me think of how I approach conferences and trade shows in general.
Yesterday was a learning-to-surf day. It went absolutely nothing like I had imagined. The waves were bigger (great for real surfers, not so much for me), my conditioning and rehab haven’t progressed as far as I’d like (upper body strength? What’s that?), and I ended up feeling like one of the guys who makes a living getting beat up in kung fu moves. All in all, it was a great day.
It was a great day because I was able to accept, enjoy, and learn from the things that actually happened rather than fixating on the things I had “planned”. I spent a wonderful day with a good friend, learned a lot about surfing, and spent a couple of hours doing some pretty cool boogie boarding in the afternoon. We ended the day listening to jazz in a small upstairs club in old-town St. Augustine — it was, quite seriously, a great day.
So how does this relate to Interop?
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Dec 15th, 2009 |
