by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Epsom, UK, October 2010: Recently we saw the first ever 360ºIT show which was launched with huge fanfare after the last Storage Expo, growing out of the aforementioned event, and was touted to be the biggest show of its kind, at least in the UK.
Why do I sound so disappointed, you may ask? The truth is that I am and that the event did not, and not just by a margin, live up to the hype. The great hype came to absolutely nothing.
The show moved from the National Hall at Olympia to Earls Court One, a much bigger venue, and was going to be so much bigger than at its former home of the National Hall.
The 360ºIT show was going to be the be all and end all of all IT exhibitions in the UK.
Alas, nothing could be further from the truth.
The show may have taken up around an eighth to a quarter, if I want to be generous, of the entire Earls Court One exhibition center's floor. It was empty, and when I say here empty then I mean just that.
Very little was happening on the day that I was visiting and there were not even half the vendors present that had been at Storage Expo last year.
The recession, which the powers-that-be claim to be well behind us, might be a factor in this, a major player even, but I think that there may be much more to it.
There is only one way to make it a proper all-in IT event and that is when we incorporate everything bar information security in one and bring back the manufacturers of hardware, as in laptops, PCs, and other devices also.
In Britain there is no such show at this time and who can afford to travel to CeBIT in Germany, especially in the economic and the environmental climate of today.
Bringing an IT event back to the UK that would encompass all aspects of ICT is, in my opinion, and also that of many of the vendors that I spoke to on the floor, the only way to revitalize such a show and the industry. The venue certainly would be big enough for it.
Unless we see a miracle happening in 2011 with this event I predict it to have a very short lifespan.
It would be possible to counteract that but only by enlarging the remit and bringing in makers and vendors of computers per se, of peripherals, and the rest, in. I see no future there otherwise.
© 2010
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