This year’s CeBIT show will feature the latest advances in retail hardware and software from the biggest players in the market.
Visitors can anticipate seeing systems that further extend familiar trends of recent years, especially in areas such as mobile wireless point of sales units and new application areas for radio frequency ID (RFID) technologies.
And it wouldn’t be an information technology show if the new products on offer didn’t meet the “smaller, faster, cheaper, more function” mantra of the IT industry.
But CeBIT organisers this year say retail visitors should also expect to see and hear a lot more about integrated solutions rather than single products.
Just as no single part of the supply chain can exist in isolation, no single link in the technology stack exists on its own.
CeBIT Australia managing director Jackie Taranto says technologies at the show are increasingly presented in the context of both the supply chain, as well as other functional areas heavily influenced by IT – such as customer relationship management, eMarketing and eFinance.
“Cebit Australia has a strong focus on technologies of interest to visitors from the retail sector, as technology plays an increasing role in the way people shop and trade” Ms Taranto said.
“In addition to all the front-end systems and point of sale infrastructure, retailers will also get to see the state-of-the-art of systems and software from across the breadth of the supply chain.”
“The way the exhibition is structured, with speciality areas, means the visitors will be able to easily find the experts and the technology that can help drive their business – whether that’s in retail IT, RFID, supply chain management or customer relationship management” she said.
The industry-specific experts and solution-specific technology are under one roof and easy to find. The less obvious but equally valuable part of CeBIT is in its conference program, particularly its CeBIT Connect Keynote Series, she says.
The day-long CeBIT Connect is designed to give senior Australian executives – regardless of what industry they work in – a snapshot of the cutting edge, giving them an understanding of where technology is heading and how it applies to their business.
CeBIT Connect speakers include Google Enterprise Vice-President and General Manager Dave Girouard on new business paradigms; Mozilla Chief Executive Mitchell Baker on the innovation of open source software; and Jim Steele, the Global President of online customer relationship specialist Salesforce.com.
“These people are absolutely at the top of their game, and they’re talking about the global development trends that are influencing markets in the here and now” Ms Taranto said.
“Things like Voice over IP, or open source software, advertising-supported business models, or next generation e-marketing are not futuristic – they’re coming down the pipeline right now” she said.
“These technologies can present enormous opportunities for businesses across a huge range of industries, or they can present a threat. But the reality is that they are here, and they need to be understood, and I think we’ve developed a conference program that will give people a snapshot of where these technologies are now, and where they are taking us.”
“We are expecting a who’s who of senior executive management from across a broad section of Australian business, so there’s a strong networking component to the event too” Ms Taranto said.
In addition to the CeBIT Connect flagship conference, organisers have put together five other specialist conference events to be held over the three-day duration of the CeBit exhibition. These include CeBIT Voice of IP – looking at the white-hot market for VoIP, which has enormous implications for Internet telephony for retailers – as well as separate events on eGovernment, eMarketing and eFinance.
Ms Taranto also said the day-long Open CeBIT conference on May 3 was a must for any business that wanted to find out more about how to leverage low-cost and innovative software from open source suppliers.
CeBIT has entrenched itself as the most important business technology exhibition and conference on the Australasian calendar. It is by far the biggest and most comprehensive event of its kind, and its 2007 showcase will be the largest staged in this country.
