IP Show Déjà Vu
It was actually the second exhibition I had been to in as many weeks, since I visited Call Centre Expo two weeks previously. Call Centre Expo was the poor showing that our recent economic challenges have led me to expect – most vendors showing the same products with nothing to get too excited about with no real attempt to have differentiators that might actually mean something to the potential customer.
I was left with an interesting question: What is the problem that IT and telecom mangers are coming to this exhibition with? If the products aren’t changing then does that mean customers still haven’t deployed the basics, or as an industry are we still not listening to the customer – however, IP Expo was at least a little bit different.
Firstly there were a large number of stands featuring more than one vendor’s logo – an interesting development that might imply, if we are fortunate, that the vendors are finally getting together and building solutions that can be used by customers rather than pitching against each other with a lot good products but half-finished solutions.
Secondly there were actually some new products – Daisy Mobile with its wireless office deployment being one of the new solutions closest to my heart. And some of the discussions on the mobile industry changes that I heard going on around me were really quite innovative. Some of the new solutions were not only new but actually seemed to have been designed with the end customer in mind. The prices seemed to work, and most amazingly of all, you were not being asked to throw away your last year’s investment to get this year’s must-have capability.
So why the frustration? Mainly I think because the exhibition seemed to have a lost a level of focus, the multiple theatres were nicely divided by technology – so how does that fit into real business where my solutions all need to be integrated? And a number of the sessions were déjà vu to five or, even in some cases, 10 years ago – surely these vendors realise that we know this stuff is marketing hype; we have been hearing it for 10 years!
Lesely is group marketing director for TeleWareGroup.
