IT Expo

February 4, 2010

I am occasionally asked to speak at various industry events or submit a form to suggest topic. This year, I have decided to focus more heavily on non-Telecom events and turn my attention toward IT or vertical market-focused speaking opportunities. My messages of achieving (purchasing) network reliability and understanding the games that are played (to outsmart you) are universal.

With this new speaking focus in mind, I ventured into an IT setting about a week ago and I wanted to share this experience with you.

I was initially invited to speak about network reliability at the IT Expo in Miami at the Miami Convention Center. This conference, along with similar conferences, was presented by publisher TMCnet.

Less than a week before the conference, I received a call from the event coordinator asking me to participate on another panel titled, “How to Manage Customers During a Catastrophic Event.” I had to give it some thought—the topic is very important but I had already locked in my airfare so I was hesitant to commit to an earlier arrival. To make a long story short, I said, “yes.” I also enriched the airlines by paying $150 to change my flight.

As an aside, the IT Expo (in my opinion) is focused on IT hardware and applications. The usual buzz topics include: smart grid, cloud computing, VoIP hosting, etc. These topics attract a range of IT professionals and exhibitors, the latter of which I will touch upon later.

So, I made my early entrance to the Expo and spoke during the session, “How to Manage Customers During a Catastrophic Event.” The attendance for this event was very light. Honestly, I was a little surprised. Perhaps this event is so application-focused that the people who need to worry about customers and how you handle them in a catastrophe is not a relevant concern? I am certain these IT people do care, because after all, customers pay their wages! To reiterate, I was surprised by the lack of interest.

The next day, I was pleased to see a much better turnout for the Network Reliability session. In a nutshell, my message was, “Stop putting the cart in front of the horse.”

Industry specialists can spend time pondering the cloud, grid, hosting, data center, etc until they are blue in the face but the reality is simple. No matter how highly you think of your cloud, grid application, hosting platform or data center, if customers don’t have reliable connectivity at bandwidth rates they require, you’re not going to progress. Gene Laykhtman, Vocal IP Networx, was also on the panel. He shared, within my concept of network reliability, the session level transport and mirroring that needs to be accomplished in order to connect a customer reliably.

I believe we opened a few eyes to the concept that magical pipes and reliability does not exist everywhere and one should take this fact into consideration. I judged the Network Reliability panel a success because my 30 white papers were gone in a flash at the end of the session. If you’d like a copy of the same white paper visit, please visit the AFS website to download it. Please be sure to share it with peers, friends and family. It also makes a great bedtime story if you have small children.

After observing another event in progress at the Miami Convention Center, I made a special announcement during the Network Reliability session. The event, billed as the worlds largest indoor Antique Show, had over 800 exhibitors. Being the fiber bigot I am, I told the audience that I would be attending the Antique Exhibit in search of 125-year-old antiques to see their price—those antiques, of course, were copper loops.

So, I set out on my Antique Show adventure. Admission cost: $10 for five days! The aisles were numbered in increments of 100, beginning at100 and ending around 3500. Each aisle was at least 125 yards long. There had to be tens of millions of dollars in antiques, gold, silver and collectible items. It was fascinating—I saw a tabletop Cinderella made out of gold with crystal figurines inside a measly $75,000. I have no idea how much such an item appreciates but I do know this fact—AFS can build 5-8 laterals into multiple buildings with a very nice IRR for $75,000. I was tempted to buy this trinket for my office but I know my VC investors occasionally read this Blog!

The most interesting sight to observe, and a good lesson to all our carrier readers, was watching people negotiate/haggle the purchase of these items. It was easily worth the $10 admission price. Let me tell you something—whether it was an antique thimble for $1,000 or jewelry from the Middle East for $125,000, no one (and I mean no one) sold anything at a loss. The value of an item, and subsequent price haggling, was amazing and hearing a seller say, “No!” was quite common. Sometimes the exchange was polite, sometimes with a laugh and sometimes with disrespect! To repeat myself, no one sold anything at a loss—no one. I suppose that’s how they stay in business—a willing to haggle for a fair price but not to lose money!

As I strolled through the Antique Show, I did get to meet Jeff Bridges who was haggling over antique post cards. In my travels, I have run into many celebrities of all sorts and I usually don’t bother them. Although, I do feel compelled to share one short story about Rodney Dangerfield. I sat near him in an Admirals Club back in the 80’s in Los Angeles, waiting for a flight to New York City. If you ever have seen his schtick with the constant shuffling of his body, pulling of his collar, stretching his neck, etc—that isn’t an act—it is how he was programmed.

If you run into me some day, ask me about my flight to Tokyo with Andre the Giant (of Professional Wrestling Entertainment fame). That’s another interesting story!

Anyway, I digress…back to the Antique Show. I never did find any copper loops. My instincts tell me that there was a special aisle for the legacy, unreliable, antique copper loops. Possibly located in aisle 666?

I returned the next day to the IT Expo exhibit floor to check out the scene. In my opinion, the best booth trinket giveaway was from Polycom. They gave away stress-reliever foam Sumo wrestlers. I now have two Sumo wrestlers parked outside of my office as a reminder to not shirk problems but to tackle them. Another booth, who I don’t remember by name, gave away green screen pictures with various celebrities. I had my picture taken and inserted with the band, the Black Eyed Peas. My teen daughter knew who they were; I just thought it was something to eat. She believed that I had actually met them for about two minutes, until her mother (the commercial photographer) busted me. Impressive Photoshop, though.

In summary, I still believe that many techie types in IT and Telecom need to understand that things do not happen as fast as what is published or presented in a research report. For example, think about cloud computing. Just ask any two people what the definition of cloud computing is and you will get three answers. Last week, Larry Ellison of Oracle fame came out and stated cloud computing has been around for 20 years! His definition of cloud computing? Precisely what Oracle sells!

I also had a conversation with a manufacturer of telephones that come with a built-in camera and screen for conferencing. I could not understand the value proposition. The screen function for this $1,800 device works ONLY on internal conference calls. There isn’t an ability to use the phone outside of the LAN. I asked the manufacturer, “What is the value of seeing an employee’s smiling face at your desk?”

That’s all this device could do. The screen is about half the size of a small laptop screen so it could not be used for graphics. Thus, I would still need a PC with WebEx or Charts displayed as we spoke. As I said before, I just did not see the value. You can always pull up an employee’s headshot if you really want to see him/her that badly. I can see the value if you can see a person from outside your organization as you speak—observing body language, facial expressions, demeanor is important. Even so, the $1,800 price tag, before network costs, is a tough one to swallow. I struggled with the value proposition as it exists today.

Finally, I believe the secondary thought is reliability and it not receiving the attention in early design phases of cloud, grid, data center, device, etc. A virtual world will require physical, non-virtual network reliability.

Written by Dave Rusin - Telecom Executive

Share and Enjoy: