Cloud computing and green themes prominent in Las Vegas
Interop tides ebb and flow, and at this spring’s Interop it is neap tide for cloud computing–bad guys continue to force the tide up for security solutions–and green themes are welling up and promise to be even more prominent next year. Videoconferencing and telepresence continue to turn heads and fill conference rooms. Application performance management remains a draw for the technical cognoscenti, while application acceleration has become ho hum.
Our favorite corner of the show, still called Startup “City” in memory of headier times, showcases just four intrepid companies–two green power management companies JouleX and Viridity Software, switch software vendor Switch++, and Dessinova Technologies, a videoconferencing management vendor showing off a prototype iPad-based product with availability promised “next month”–pretty snappy since the iPad itself is still a newborn.
Interop’s identity as a networking show further wanes this year as it continues a long-established trajectory into a generic IT show. The fact that Staples is exhibiting is emblematic. The show increasingly reaches into the data center, even including nifty gadgets to physically shuttle servers from place to place. There is also a plethora of tools to move and track files around the cloud, and technologies to build and manage private as well as hybrid public/private clouds.
Interop is changing with the times, and is remarkably still extant after all these years–a fact we find comforting.
