Last week was Cebit Sydney.  The 'downunder' version of the famous German tradeshow.  It's been going for a few years now, and it's a good excuse to leap on the big silver bird to go and see what's new and shiny, to meet with some of our clients and partners in Sydney and generally get a sense of where the trends are heading.

This year, Cebit was noticeably smaller than last.  Must be the 'R' word.  Even so, it's still a big show and takes a while to get around.  Admission normally costs a few coins, but this year, organisers were giving away free tickets right up until the final day in an effort to boost attendence.  It must have worked, attendence seemed strong, but it was still easy enough to talk to the exhibitors of interest.

So, what was interesting was what wasn't there.  Loads of stands from various governments supporting their local industry (Korea, Germany, South Africa and many others) but no sign of a silver fern or NZ anywhere.  If there was a NZTE stand, I didn't see it - and I did look!.  Likewise, Virtual PC was all the rage last year, but this year I didn't see a single stand.  Nor the new Netbooks.  You'd expect to see vendor after vendor showing their latest offerings off, but in fact not one, although Netbooks themselves  were very visible amongst attendees, and even fellow travellers on the way across the ditch.  I was amused that Nokia stand, busy advertising their latest phones, didn't actually seem to have a single one on display!  A marked contrast to the Blackberry stand across the hall which had the latest and shiniest PDAs, attracting attendees like flames attract moths, or candy lures small children!

Symantec's focus is clearly on their backup product range.  Their anti-virus was nowhere to be seen.  In fact anti-virus was quite a small section this year.  But backups, and especially online backups were very prevalent.  There is a huge debate on about the relevance of tape backups now that online backup is becoming cost effective - (Kinetics thinks it all depends on your needs - one size doesn't fit all, and internet traffic levels will still be a determining factor - and Kinetics is now offering online backups through a partnership).  One stand that I spent some time on was an online email archive service, and this is something we'll take a closer look at over the next few weeks and, if it passes scrutiny, we'll test it and report back.

The biggest cluster of products was telephony, VOIP solutions.  They all look very similar to me, and I rather suspect that the functionality is similar. Key issues will be ensuring support.  Also a heck of lot of plumbing - wires, cable connectors, racks, switches etc.  What caught my eye was the number of businesses offering cheaper Cisco gear - 'factory surplus' 'second hand- "ex demo"', heck, you'd think you'd wandered into a car dealer's yard!

I made the mistake of asking one recycling provider just what made them different.  And got a full description of the chemical process the use to break down the circuit boards etc.  Chemistry was never my strength and it all sounded very clever, I won't make that mistake again!! But very pleasing that recycling is being taken seriously and the parts are being properly disposed of, not just thrown in a landfill. Again, as a courtesy, Kinetics has started to collect old machines for clients and take them to a local recycler in East Tamaki. 

With no significant IT tradeshows in Auckland, Cebit is an important yardstick to gauge what's going on.  It's a useful way to find out what is hot, and which products vendors want to promote.  The trick, as always, is working out what is useful, and what isn't, and how it can add value to your business.