The mobile and wireless marketplace is growing rapidly. As technologists, we have become so enraptured with low-cost calling plans, new devices and a blanket of Wi-Fi that we risk missing the forest full of change because we’re so enamored by the saplings of emerging technology. Demomobile 2003, to be held Sept. 17-19 in LaJolla, Calif., seeks to remedy this by spotlighting significant products and trends affecting the mobile and wireless market.
The mobile and wireless marketplace is growing rapidly. As technologists, we have become so enraptured with low-cost calling plans, new devices and a blanket of Wi-Fi that we risk missing the forest full of change because we’re so enamored by the saplings of emerging technology. Demomobile 2003, to be held Sept. 17-19 in LaJolla, Calif., seeks to remedy this by spotlighting significant products and trends affecting the mobile and wireless market.
The rapid adoption of mobile technology by individuals, combined with the subsequent opening up of enterprise networks and the onslaught of broadband to the home, is having subtle but profound effects on business and culture. As the personal computing business transforms into a device computing business, the node at the end of the network is no longer a computer; it’s a person. Individuals are adopting device technology for themselves or driving the adoption of technology inside their organizations.
The beleaguered IT executive must decide whether to fling wide the arms of acceptance and manage the chaos as best as possible, or slam shut figurative doors to the server room and throw up a protective wall of policy and process to curb renegade end users. Neither option is comfortable, but ultimately an open policy will win out. Yet between now and then, IT executives must rethink network access, security configurations and – more importantly – their role as infrastructure provider in a vastly outsourced organizational model.
The situation isn’t much better for the individual, who also is undergoing a gradual and profound change in large measure because of the adoption of mobile communications and data technology. Always-connected, always-on devices fundamentally change the way people interact with the network, companies that support it and one another. The lines between business and personal uses intermingle. And increasingly, it’s not the device or the network that is always on – it’s the individual who can never quite turn off and tune out the din of work and play.
Whether you think of yourself as the IT executive who must anticipate and respond to changing requirements or the always-on individual for whom being connected is a way of life, Demomobile is the platform to explore this phenomenon and other important trends – and do so in the context of the new products, services and technologies that will shape the outcome of this discussion. About 35 products will make their debut at Demomobile.
Additionally, an array of top thinkers from major IT suppliers will share their visions of the unfolding mobile and wireless marketplace. To learn more about the conference, go to www.idgef.com/demomobile.
Shipley is executive producer of The Demo Conferences and a veteran technology watcher. She can be reached at chris@demo.com.
