conferences and trade shows

It’s always a pleasure to spend a few days in Barcelona. Though when it’s for Mobile World Congress, the tapas and nightlife give way to the exhausting reality of navigating some 1500 exhibitors sprawled over an area about twice the size of Camp Nou, Barcelona FC’s vast stadium.

On the opening day of this year’s Mobile World Congress Telefónica, the Spanish operator, joined Mozilla to announce the Open Web Devices platform, with a reference mobile phone architecture allowing HTML5 applications API access to core device capabilities — paving the way for pure HTML5 smartphones. Mozilla demonstrated the technology at the show on a Samsung Galaxy S2 stripped of its Android OS by Mozilla engineers.

The Mozilla Foundation first started talking about Boot to Gecko last summer. The idea is to offer a native web environment for mobile devices, similar to Google’s Chromebooks, a model Google isn’t (yet?) bringing to mobiles because that’s where Android goes. So what will your next smartphone be running — iOS, Android, Windows, or Gecko? And will your tablet be running the same OS?

Our take? From the enterprise point of view, rather than representing a step to increased standardization, this is more likely to be one more level of fragmentation in the market. And one more reason for an enterprise browser solution, capable of standardizing enterprise usage and enforcing policy whatever device is in the hands or on the desk of the end user.

In a rare show of Anglo-French synchronization, the IPExpo event in London last month was mirrored by IPConvergence running at the same time in Paris. Both shows pitched themselves to visitors as the meeting place for cloud, communications, and mobility.

In Paris, cloud infrastructure services – IaaS – and unified communications dominated the show, with large stands showcasing the Cloud offerings of a number of (ex-) ISPs, hosters, and telcos. The London event was stronger on solutions vendors with sponsor “villages” highlighting this or that vendor’s solutions and partner ecosystem.

But while vendors, operators, integrators and just about anybody trying to sell IT solutions is pushing the Cloud, where are the customers?

Faced with a plethora of offerings, the customer is anxiously trying to work out what the best solutions are for their business- and how to fit those solutions together. Cloud computing may one day boost agility, but right now it’s doing a good job of boosting confusion.

This is where Cloud Services Brokerage fits in. The Cloud Services Broker is a specialized third party who can identify, select, and integrate multiple cloud services according to individual customer needs.

What does this have to do with CommonIT? With a new solution, AirShip, CommonIT complements the Cloud Services Brokerage with a focus on the end user. Multiple services from different clouds are likely to be even more confusing for the end user than for the CIO. With AirShip, browser configurations and connectivity are managed from the datacenter or in the cloud, with no end-user intervention. As cloud-based services evolve and migrate between private or public clouds, AirShip allows the enterprise or the service provider to deliver reliable, transparent connectivity for the end user.

On September 30th CommonIT’s Swiss partner Navixia brought together 90 IT managers and consultants for the third Navixia Forum, a half-day conference dedicated to information security solutions.

This year the program included five customer case studies, including a prestigious Geneva-based client of commonIT who shared their experience of a Virtual Browser deployment with the audience. Participants responded enthusiastically to the presentation, covering how Virtual Browser is used to deliver a secure Internet access service. We’ll be bringing you more details shortly.

Just back from three intense and encouraging days at the Assises de la Sécurité conference in Monaco. It’s the first time commonIT has been to the event, an annual fixture in the French information security calendar now in its ninth year. The number and the quality of the contacts we made was impressive, with a lot of interest in the Virtual Browser solution. As word got around, with CSOs, industry analysts and consultants speaking to each other about commonIT, it was as if we were watching our technology grow from day to day, evolving from “technical innovation” to “enterprise solution” before our eyes. Journalists from leading French industry media including Distributique, 01 informatique,  Journal du Net, Global Security Mag, and virtuanews joined the buzz.

We’re going to have our work cut out following up all the leads — but that was what we went for! A big thank you to DG Consultants for the organisation and management of the event.

ECS, the European leader in IT infrastructure management with a turnover of €1.9bn, is holding its very first Partner Days on 1st and 2nd October at the Château Saint-Just near Paris, and commonIT has been invited to participate. The aim of the Partner Days, which will consist of a series of information and technical and sales training sessions, is to develop joint business opportunities by offering innovative, value-added technology solutions to clients of ECS and its partners.

The event will be attended by around 300 people from all over Europe. Representing ECS will be the Board of Directors, the Product Managers, the Sales and presales teams, technical support and Project Managers. An opportunity for us at commonIT to develop a tighter relationship with a valuable partner.

Does what, exactly? Why, winning the Monaco Grand Prix, of course! When commonIT heads for Monaco next month we won’t be trying to emulate Formula 1 drivers (though some of the team regret this) — but we’re going there to win.

From October 7th to 10th around a thousand of the most senior CSOs representing practically every major enterprise, ministry and government and local authority agency in France will be in Monaco for the ninth annual “Assises de la sécurité” get-together. As one of the sponsors of the event commonIT will man a stand for the three days of conferences and workshops, and deliver a 40 minute workshop on virtualisation and browser security. Through a partnership with the French edition of Global Security Mag all delegates will also receive a copy of a new white paper on enterprise web security developped by commonIT — the English version will be available shortly, watch this blog!

The three days of close interaction with high-level contacts from every sector of the French economy are a once-a-year opportunity to reach key decision makers, to spread the Virtual Browser message, to listen to their needs, and to detect new business opportunities. That’s why we’re sending a team of three people; commonIT will represented by Daniel, Albino and myself. Just like Jenson Button, we’re going there to win. But we’ll be driving a little more slowly.