IP’08 & VM’08 – Day 1 Review

Day 1 sounded good, can’t wait to attend tomorrow….

Earls Court 2 buzzed with activity from the moment the enthusiastic voice announced that IP’08 and the new VM’08 were open for business. It was standing room only in the seminars and keynotes, particularly for the virtualisation sessions – there was a palpable sense of anticipation and curiosity for what is still, for many organisations, a new concept in computer engineering. Wth Microsoft, Citrix and VMware showing the latest solutions in action.

Among the exhibitors, the mood was surprisingly optimistic given the recent upheavals on Wall Street and Threadneedle Street, summed up by porttracker’s Caroline Barker-Littley: “If companies can get more out of their existing resources, it is good news at a time of belt-tightening. Tools like ours that can discover and re-utilise seemingly lost ports – just as virtualisation can utilise unused and ‘lost’ server capacity – become very attractive when efficiency is a priority.”

From the get-go there was little room to swing a virtual desktop on the stands of IP show regulars such as Avaya, handling wide-ranging enquiries from security to Unified Communications. Avaya keynote speaker Martyn Lambert noted that visitors were anxious to cope with the rapid pace of technological and social change and the need to respond effectively: “They know that if they haven’t got a strategy for customers using Web 2.0 and social networking phenomena, such as Facebook and blogging, their competitors will. It’s an exciting time to be here.”.

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