[JDEV] CEBIT 2003

[Ulrich Staudinger]

Hello all, 

So i have been to CEBIT Europe 2003 in Hannover.

The CEBIT still is the worlds biggest computer fair and propably the oldest
as well, afaik. 

More than 25 halls covered everything around communication, no real
technical innovations, just embedded servers (chip-www-servers), new mobiles, umts
and stuff. However there was a major change in product presentation, not
technical innovations stood in the foreground, but ideas and possibilites. What can
a customer do with Soap, MySQL and so on. 

Talking about Soap and Mysql, i remember hall 3, where john maddog hall (the
evergreen) held a speech about free software. Hall 3 was mainly open source
oriented, with major companies showing linux and open source applications.
however nothing new. 

Instant Messaging definitely is a theme on the CEBIT, all major mobile
companies (siemens, nokia, ericson) drop a sentence or two about IM during
presentations. IPSwitch, with their instant messenger, are the only companies
showing dedicated IM applications. Having seen the demo, i want to say the ipswitch
messenger is very limited in functionality, but aims at a slightly different
direction. It is more professional, in some sorts. 

Other innovations where the tenth calling system, of course voice
controlled, with a nice female voice guiding you through a cinema ticket system. 

Virtual characters are present.  Video and audio conferencing is
professionalizing even more.

I talked with SUSE about possible sponsorship. They were polite, invited me
to take a seat and i had a short talk with someone who had no clue about
jabber and Instant Messaging. Nonetheless he gave me the adress of the SUSE
sponsorship lady, which i will now contact. 


That's all for now, 
ulrich

-- 
Ulrich Staudinger
Product Manager @ http://ignite.dtedu.net/ 
JID: uls at jabber.org