#1 InternetWorld
Dressing down and facial hair seem to be the trend at InternetWorld, plus marketing lovelies a plenty on the stands. I think this is a new show in the UK - I haven't seen or been to this before, it wasn't here with InfoSec last year. It's a big show and it's surprisingly well attended. There are a number of European and US guys here, with some international pavilions for networking, and a couple of US faces I recognised from our S+S stand at the WWPC in Houston last summer and Microsoft WW Hosting Summits in Seattle.
Peer1/Server Beach were there, fighting it out with a big brash show stand, right next door to an equally flashy Rackspace stand. My inflatable airship and flashing lights are bigger than yours and all that. When I left they were doing their best to ignore each other, ha ha, all good fun, they were having a good time.
I was somewhat amazed at the number of traditional web hosters with stands at the show- web, dedicated servers, domain registrars were very present here. The majority of the rest of the exhibitors are web marketers - search optimisation, email marketing, conversion tracking, web marketing etc. I've picked up lots of cards, brochures and left my cards with some of them.
Had an interesting conversation with Huddle (online collaboration workspaces, all very social web 2.0). They have decided to become a Strategic Alliance Partner with Microsoft I believe, with the aim of working with SharePoint solutions (a good idea I think.) So they are building a Huddle service that sits with SharePoint and joins them together. They are looking for ISV opportunities and reseller partners. They have my card. A trendy flexible Huddle service sitting on top of a managed SharePoint platform sounds ideal.
Also spoke to Red Ant whom are doing some work around social media and networking sites for businesses. They have interesting ideas (and probably the coolest shiny white minimalist stand in the show) and I can't help but feel we might chat some more.
I finally caught up with Kyle York - this is him (http://twitter.com/kyork20) and his global dynamic DNS services at Dyn Inc. http://dynamicnetworkservices.com/ they are so like Cobweb is lots of ways by keeping it personal and building trust, by trying to beat the big guys with great technology, and by flexible with customised solutions that their customers want. We're going to give their DNS load-balanced services a trial.
#2 The Service Desk & IT support show
This is a smaller and quieter show that the others. Made up of regular show stands and sales people in business suits, none of the Internet hairy high-five US dudes in here! If you want a new service desk system or training, then it's a good place to look at the marketplace. Most of the presentations, as ever, are vendor based so are biased towards their product. I sat in one from ITSB about best practice, ITIL etc. was good but then I'm already a believer of ITIL and using standards to get it right.
Finally saw Bomgar in action. It's slick remote desktop, works pretty well and is lightweight. They recognised Cobweb immediately as we've looked at their solutions in the past, we'll see what happens there.
I saw a couple of knowledge management solutions in action, cool stuff, but in talking to two different vendors about this it's clear that the content, user adoption and management of the solution is what drives success. They don't really claim to have a magic bullet for that other than one guy who said "make it a critical part of someone's existence within your organisation. Make it so they MUST make it a success - make them Knowledge Manager - they have to succeed to exist!" he has a point.
#3 InfoSec
The daddy of network and security shows in the UK with all the big name vendors from the globe here - Symantec, HP, MessageLabs, F5, CheckPoint etc.
For some of the new or quirky gadgets, BBC News Technology have something from today.
For me this was a good opportunity to catch-up with our vendor and resellers partners, so spoke with Security Partnerships about the new CheckPoint firewalls (you know that CheckPoint recently purchased the firewall part of Nokia right?) and saw some half-width (two side by side in 1U) firewalls suitable for WAN/private links that need firewalling.
Caught up with MessageLabs (provider of perimeter email security AV/AS to all Cobweb Hosted Exchange customers as standard), big stand with lots happening, but nothing really new around the Symantec relationship yet to talk to. Check out MessageLabs Intelligence if you get the chance, it's scary yet comforting.
Had a long chat with Craig from F5 Networks about their load-balancing solutions for servers and data centres. Big bucks but nice features if you need them. Turns out he plays rugby with a friend of ours in the Cobweb alumni.
Cobweb are at InfoSec again tomorrow as there's still more to see, including virtualisation and network monitoring amongst other things. If you're there, say hello to Matt MacAulay and Paul Green.
Back in the office tomorrow. There are some pictures from today on http://twitpic.com/photos/dan_germain
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