CeBIT 2008 Hannover

Posted March 13, 2008 at 8:02 pm by admin in General.

At Jitscale we believe it’s important all employees keep up with recent ICT developments. Besides reading industry related websites and having discussions among colleagues, it can prove really useful to regularly visit a conference or fair.

As we did, on the 6th & 7th of March, 2008. With about five colleagues we travelled to Hannover, Germany, to attend CeBIT 2008. It was my first time at CeBIT, but other colleagues had been before.

My first impression was: ‘how BIG!’ Inconceivably large halls, filled with stands and stages. Based on their previous visits and using a map we received at the entrance, my colleagues planned routes for both the first and second day. We strategically traversed the halls and visited all interesting stands. Some big names were present as well, including IBM, SUN, Microsoft, etc. Personally I found it a bit disappointing to discover many typical sales people in the stands were unable to elucidate technical information on their own products. Demos were apparently just there to illustrate the sales process.

Another thing that struck me, was the large number of Asians selling the weirdest computer related products, keen to do business with the West. There was also a stand of the Union of Iranian Software Exporters, so remarkable everybody wanted to take a picture. Really cool though, to see what a small world this is and that everyone wants to do business with anyone.

Too bad there was only a very small ‘Open Source’ area. There were some famous names, but they had little interesting to say. A remarkable trend: very few truly spectacular developments. But there was spectacular entertainment, such as a nitrogen cooled (-100C) Intel Quad Core on 5 Ghz or the European Championship Warcraft 3, played live on stage by two participants, underneath a gigantic screen, and bleachers filled with spectators. Complete with running commentary by special commentators. I realised it might as well have been a boxing match in this setting.

This year, unfortunately, no groundbreaking technical or software revelations. Still, I have an inkling 2008 will be an interesting year for the ICT industry. I have no concrete reasoning for that yet, but we’ll see!

Jim Nijkamp
Project manager