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Preview of Next Week's TechXNY

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/06/17/020617hnpcexpo.xml

June 17, 2002 05:19 AM
1. PC Expo becomes solution-centric TechXNY
By Dan Neel
PRACTICAL TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS for businesses and consumers will be the focus of next week's TechXNY trade show, taking place at New York's Javits Convention Center June 25 through 27.

The 10-year-old trade show, once called PC Expo, will be less a venue for cutting-edge point products than an opportunity for vendors to reach customers with broader technology solutions that solve existing problems and show immediate ROI, explained Tim Scannell, an industry analyst with Shoreline Research in Quincy, Mass.

"More and more companies are going to these shows to find technology solutions, so when they look at the products on display they are going to be very much looking from a solutions standpoint," Scannell said.

Indicative of this solution-centric mindset, IBM will be at the trade show discussing work being done to deliver starter packs for small and medium-size businesses that deliver the tools needed to get a company's technology platform up and running, Big Blue representatives said.

Similar to IBM, such diverse vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, and Sun have each been ramping up IT service and solution integration efforts to simplify the deployment of technology to all levels of business, and will each bring their messages to the trade show, representatives for the companies said.

The reason for the change is simple. Unlike past PC Expos, end-users now tire of having to navigate through the slew of point-release products available in the industry, and vendors at TechXNY will be aware of that, Scannell explained.

"I think vendors are going to be listening very carefully to what IT people wandering the show floor have to say; their comments and perspectives. I think a lot of technology, when it first came out maybe six months to a year ago, was being sold from a technology standpoint, and the industry was very much driven by that technology. What's happening now is that it is very much driven by solutions, by ROI, and by total cost of ownership. IT has become a very selective, smart audience, and they are going to ask some really tough questions at the show," Scannell added.

A keynote address by Jeff Raikes, group vice president for Microsoft's Productivity and Business Services, will kick off the trade show. Raikes will discuss an expected boom in knowledge worker productivity that Microsoft sees occurring over the next decade, according to show representatives.

During his address, Raikes will demonstrate new applications for Tablet PC devices, which Microsoft believes will prevail as the next step in fully functional personal computing.
Early demonstrations of HP's recently announced Tablet PC -- which runs Transmeta's Crusoe processor -- will take the Tablet PC discussion to the trade show floor, according to Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Giga Information Group, based in Cambridge, Mass.

"Tablet PCs will be a high point of the show," Enderle said. "We've got a series of vendors who are rolling them out and looking at [the show] as the place to announce. So, as far as the new technology at the show, a lot of it will have to do with Tablets PCs."

Mobility and wireless technology will play a big role at the trade show, Scannell said.

A recent wave of wireless, 802.11-enabled laptop systems from HP, IBM, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and Sony, just to name a few, will be what business technology buyers are most interested in, as well and handheld PDAs that can deliver immediate ROI, Scannell continued.

"What attendees will be very interested in are notebook systems that have integrated wireless capabilities. They are also going to look at some of the new devices like the Trio from Handspring, things that would show immediate productivity if they give it to their mobile sales force or workforce," Scannell said.

Intel is expected to launch its first 2GHz Pentium 4-M mobile chip the week before the trade show, according to sources familiar with the company's plans. New laptop systems running the speedy new Intel chip will likely debut at TechXNY from Intel OEMs such as HP, IBM, and Dell, sources said.

Security will be a pervasive topic at TechXNY, as companies looking to deploy wireless systems and other vulnerable technology will have to deal with protecting their corporate data.

"Security is going to be a major, major issue there. Particularly if users are looking at wireless systems," Scannell said, adding that the security discussion at TechXNY will "go beyond passwords and IDs. If a company is going to go mobile and allow access to mission critical information, then you have to have some sort of a secure pipeline."

Enderle agrees that TechXNY will less about product hype and more about the fundamentals of business technology in the current political and economic environments.

"I think the underlying theme of the show will be more staples, like security, things that deal with the industry environment the way it is now," Enderle said, adding that TechXNY will be a more "toned-down" show, lacking in attendance due to travel concerns and company budgets.

But representatives for TechXNY said pre-registration for the show is up from last year, even though they suspect that the final head count for attendance may be just above or equal to last year's event.