IT Expo - Day 2

Day 2 was more of the same here. Lots of briefings and some good sessions. The show floor opened late yesterday afternoon, and I had a quick walkabout. It's smaller in scale from last year, but that's par for the course for all shows these days. The traffic seemed pretty good, but it's too early to tell how exhibitors are finding things.

It's also a bit early to determine how much the show has benefitted from the VON fallout. I'm going to stay mum on that for now, but if you're curious, you should check out the blogs of the usual suspects who have already shared their views. And if you don't know who they are, drop me a line.

Nothing really stands out for me in terms of who's exhibiting - many are familiar and represent the mix you'd expect to see here. What I did like seeing was Tier 1 operators exhibiting, for either wholesale traffic - Qwest, or business services - Time warner Cable. I'll be spending more time walking the show today and should have a better idea then of how things are working for everyone.

Otherwise, here are some photos from the first two days - enjoy...

View from my hotel room - aside from the smog, not a bad place to be...



Rich Tehrani kicking off the keynotes on Tuesday



Jonathan Christensen of Skype




Xuedong(XD) Huang of Microsoft



Andy Abramson's wine dinner (apologies for the grainy photo!)



Phil Wolff all lit up...



You know who this man is - always good to see Carl - at any event...



Tom Howe's applications session (got some very good news coming about him)



Packet 8/Microsoft/Aastra launch of Response Point - very nice combination here. Microsoft made several notable announcements at the show, and this is probably the biggest in terms of making some serious moves into the business voice market. It's great for Packet 8, as this gives them a complete solution for the SMB market. Sure will be interesting to see how much of their new growth comes from resellers versus direct sales at the retail level. Pictured are Huw Rees, Xuedong Huang and Bryan Martin.





Technorati tags: Jon Arnold, J Arnold & Associates, TMC IT Expo