IP EXPO 2012 draws record visitor numbers

24 Oct 2012

Disruptive trends and new innovations were key themes of this year’s event.

New opportunities to meet business demand, in an era of disruptive trends: these were the key themes of the keynote speech given by Warren East, CEO of chip design company ARM, on the second day of IP EXPO 2012.

East was discussing how mobile communications are redefining the way we all work, but in fact, these themes came up again and again, in a variety of contexts, throughout the two days of this year's event - the biggest ever in the show's history, with a record number of visitors, 260 seminars and 240 exhibitors.

One company that is already seizing on a new opportunity presented by ARM’s chips is Boston, which chose IP EXPO as the venue to debut its low-power ARM-based Viridis servers. That makes the company a very early entrant in the market for ARM servers, where the kinds of chips more commonly found in smartphones provide the foundations of corporate computing. By basing Viridis on ARM technology, Boston has created a system capable of achieving ‘hyperscale’ - a feat only possible by clustering many servers powered by low-power, low-heat chips. There will be more on this subject in a future edition of the IP EXPO Online Bulletin.

Another disruptive technology that got many attendees and exhibitors talking this year was software-defined networking (SDN). Both Hewlett-Packard and Juniper were showcasing this technology on their stands and in presentations, alongside market newcomers such as Vyatta.

And there can be few companies right now that threaten to disrupt the established IT security market to quite the same extent as Bromium does. The company's CTO and co-founder Simon Crosby's keynote showcased for attendees Bromium's novel approach to security, which takes the virtualisation concept and then applies it at a micro-level on personal devices, in order to help companies tackle risk even as they face an onslaught of consumer technologies.

Meanwhile, open business models, as Warren East noted, "are allowing greater collaboration and partnership to drive innovation across the board," and there was plenty of innovation under discussion on the show's second day. This included a live mobile hack by Oracle, groundbreaking facial recognition technology from NEC, and a joint keynote from SEGA Europe and its technology partner VMware, on how the cloud is helping the company to develop better games, faster. Businesses, said Francis Hart of SEGA Europe, should “turn IT into a weapon to compete against the other people in your game - and win.”

The voices of other end-user organisations from both the private and public sectors were heard too, most notably in a lively panel debate, Bring your own device or build your own demise? , featuring Barclays and the London Borough of Lambeth.

Openness was also the theme of the event’s closing keynote , by Jacqui Taylor, CEO of Flying Binary. Taylor, a Home Office consultant, is a passionate advocate of open data in government and her keynote gave attendees a fascinating insight into how open data might be used by government to make significant and substantial improvements to people’s lives.

Right now,  she argues, data is seriously undervalued by too many people. “If you’re making a decision, either political or commercial, unless you base that decision on data, then you’re just another person with an opinion,” she told IP EXPO Online, in an interview following her keynote. Again, a future edition of the IP EXPO Online Bulletin will contain a more in-depth chat with Taylor.

Videos of the vast majority of keynotes and presentations from this year's events are now available at  IP EXPO Online. The final word on the event, meanwhile, goes to Hugh Keeble, managing director of the event’s organiser, Imago Techmedia: “We are delighted with the number of delegates, exhibitors and seminars at this year’s show. Top tech companies see this event as a platform to unveil new products and services, making it the one place for delegates to learn about and purchase systems and solutions to enhance their IT departments and provide real competitive differentiation.”